Love One Another

“He said”, “she said”, “If only they would have done…”, “I heard…”, “Can you believe, such and such…” I would never do…” and on and on it goes. It’s called gossip, rumors, half-truths, being right and righteous—and none of it serves anyone other than our own selfish need to be right and liked. Dale Carnegie, who wrote the “bible” of human relationships and communication entitled, How to Win Friends and Influence People, summed it up best when he said, “If most people treated others like they do their dogs, there wouldn’t be a need for this book.”

In 1943, Abraham Maslow submitted a paper, now infamously known as “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” His theory contends that as humans meet ‘basic needs,’ they seek to satisfy successively ‘higher needs’ that occupy a set hierarchy. Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.”

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a pyramid with five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as “deficiency needs,” associated with physiological needs, while the top level is termed “growth needs,” associated with psychological needs. While our deficiency needs must be met, our growth needs are continually shaping our behavior. The basic concept is the growth needs in this hierarchy only come into focus once all the deficiency needs are mainly or entirely satisfied. The five levels of needs from the top of the pyramid to the base are as follows.

1. Self-Actualization
2. Esteem
3. Love and Belonging
4. Safety
5. Physiological

After the physiological and safety needs are met, humans need to be loved and feel like they belong. Since we are all humans, who doesn’t need, want and desire this? The best definition of love I’ve ever seen is:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. There are these three things. Faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is Love.

I don’t know about you but sounds like a pretty awesome way of being! We all need it, we all want it, let’s give it and do it…love one another.

Believe…

Brett Penager