Rethinking Lifestyle

The month of December is a good time to remember to be generous. I found myself shopping for trinkets recently. We have a family tradition of filling Christmas stockings with small stuff. I am fully aware that I am sustaining an exploitative economic system if I buy this stuff indiscriminately, so I try to think about who made the item, and who is benefiting from my purchase.

I try to think about the life situation of the person to whom I am giving a gift. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a useful tool to help me decide what kind of a gift would be appreciated. Maslow suggests that first, people need their basic survival needs met; things like food and shelter. If a person is in that category the best gift would be a gift of money. Further up Maslow’s pyramid is the need to be loved and the need to belong. The gift you could give this person is to invite them to your family gathering and befriend them beyond that. The next need according to Maslow is one of esteem. This person would love to receive a personal letter expressing your genuine gratitude for the contributions they make to their family, community or to the wider world.

In his later years Maslow added a further category to his pyramid; self-transcendence. Here you realize that satisfaction comes from giving yourself to a goal or project outside of yourself. It is also expressed by the old saying, “it is better to give than to receive”.

We and the people who will receive our gifts are not only at one level of Maslow’s pyramid at a time. We are likely to be at all levels most of the time, although some people have more opportunity to explore the top levels than others.

How do you get satisfaction out of life? What does life mean for you? What is good, what has value? I am in the process of trying to articulate my own worldview. I believe we need to examine, articulate, refine, communicate and consistently apply our worldview to our behaviour and practise. In that process I have come to understand that a high need all of us have is meaningful relationships. In other words, to love and to be loved in return provides great satisfaction. We can build and maintain meaningful relationships by being generous with our time, our talents and our money. Being generous is more attainable once we realize that true satisfaction does not come only from stuff that we want but also and more consistently from what we share and give away. This provides satisfaction and meaning to life.