The Human Need

I'm not sure. 

Do most people ponder about this.

Perhaps this did cross our minds. Many a times. In those sleepless nights. Nights pondering about life. About directions. About meanings. Or perhaps this had always been whispering at the back of our minds, longing for us to to just stop bustling about our busy tracks. To just stop and listen. 

But no. We had always been busy throughout most of our lives. Busy with studies. With exams. Assignments. Socializing. Working. Volunteering. Ministry. Kids. Family.  And whooosh! We had set one foot in the grave not knowing what or how or why we'd been aimlessly busy for most part of our lives.

There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech.

That's why important thoughts only ring out loud in the middle of one's sleepless nights. It is the only chance for them to be heard. To call us back to the right track.

We all know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The 5 different levels of needs set in a pyramid, starting from physiological needs (food, water, warmth...yeah all the basic, perhaps include Wi-Fi there for modern era purposes)  and slowly moving up to the human need for safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualization. Then, Adler pops in to reassure us the need to belong, to be accepted, to be loved. I don't know much about any other theories out there, but somehow all these theories seemed to miss out this one human need. This very need basically summed out what all these psychologists had said. (I shall just leave you here to ponder about this need.)

Then, amazingly, I had the opportunity to stumble upon this theory- Theory of Holes. And I was like "Woah!" This was what I wanted to read. According to Almas, who first described this theory, as humans grow (from the day we were born to where we are right now), we developed holes formed in our soles for many reasons: imperfect environment at home, school and beyond, misunderstandings due to our child's immature mind, traumas. We experience these holes in our souls as longings, longings for what is missing.

I guess we can truly relate to these longings. Longing for love when we feel unlovable. Longing for trust when we feel anxious. Longing for truth and understanding when we feel doubt and confusion. Longing for compassion when we feel being judged. Longing for connection when we feel lonely. Longing for a sense of completeness when we sense there is something wrong, that empty feeling in our lives. Longing for joy when life feels heavy. And the list goes on. Each person has their own unique set of holes based on their history, mental and physical make-up.

So what did we do with these holes? These holes, these longings became the basis of worship. 

We worship people who we judged beautiful because we feel like we are not beautiful enough. We idolized K-Pops and celebrities because in some way, we have the longing for beauty. We worship winners because we more often feel like a loser inside. We worship those who are strong because we struggle with weaknesses. We worship wealth because we struggle with the sense of poverty within us. We idolized those who are smart, from book authors to famous bloggers and philosophers, all because we feel that we have not as much knowledge to share. Unconsciously, we had, all along, been looking for people or things outside of ourselves to worship.

But these sense of worships could not fulfill these holes, neither do they take away the emptiness within. 

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship......pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”- David Foster Wallace

Alright. So I'll just throw this thought here. And pause right here.

Go figure.

Somehow, admit it or not, worship, is something that people do naturally. 

The human need to worship, has always been around, through and through, in every part of our lives. But why? Why is this need only found in humankind, but not in animals? Why is this need often unspoken, avoided or denied? Is it because when we talk about worship, we thought about religion, we thought about......God?

"You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."-John 8:32