Are you familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? The idea is that lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed, as represented by the graphic below. So humans’ basic needs – food, water, shelter, sleep, etc. – have to be taken care of before we can move on to security, love and belonging, confidence and achievement, and, ultimately, the ability to be creative, spontaneous, and to take the moral high ground.
This theory is meant to explain our motivations. Movement through these levels isn’t implied to be linear or even consecutive. We can bounce from one level to the other, and occupy different levels at the same time, especially when dealing with different issues.
And that’s pretty much all I remember from Psych 101.
In any case, I can totally see how this theory would apply to my own life. I was thinking about this as it relates to pregnancy and I think this situation really warrants its own very specific hierarchy of needs.
I figure it would look something like this:
I am maybe, sort of, almost pondering working my way into the purple layer. But honestly, most of the time I’m still stuck down in the orange. And I’m okay with that. Just don’t eat my Cheerios.
