I have recently moved from a 130 year old house in town, to an isolated spot on the West Coast with muddy paths and basic amenities – like when I was growing up. I have come full circle.
As I was cooking dinner in my new place the other night, a Bruce Springsteen song leapt from the speakers and captured my attention:
‘Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don’t make no difference what nobody says
Ain’t nobody likes to be alone.
Everybody’s got a hungry heart
Everybody’s got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody’s got a h-h-hungry heart’
As Mark says in his blog, ‘The narrator is saying, obviously, that everyone has a “hungry heart,” meaning that everyone needs affection and attention, no matter where it comes from. And that everyone is hungry, or greedy, for love and affection. Everybody always wants more than what they currently have.’
An interesting comment from Anonymous in the comments section, showing how old ideas could be re-purposed into something new: ‘I think “Hungry heart” may be from Ulysses by Tennyson. Tennyson being another person who up and left his family. Ulysses up and left his family in search for new places, ideas and experiences. Not relationships per se. Hungry heart in the poem is meaning to find one’s self through new experiences.’
We took what we had and we ripped it apart
Now here I am down in Kingston again
It is a very real part of the Human Condition. For thousands of years we have destructively roamed the landscape of this wonderful planet and some are even plotting to escape to Mars, now that the damage has been done. Wondering about this, I think of the prescient James Cameron movie Avatar.
Hungry for love and affection are not the only needs we have. In my book How the Brain Thinks, I discuss Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, published in 1943. It is still relevant today.
‘There are 5 sets of goals (basic needs) which are related to each other and are arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency. When the most prepotent goal is realized, the next higher need emerges. “Thus man is a perpetually wanting animal.” Thwarting, actual or imminent, of these basic needs provides a psychological threat that leads to psychopathy’ says the extract from the original article. The five basic needs are ranked from physiological (hunger and sex), safety, love and self esteem to self-actualization.
The constant searching for a universal truth or perfect way of life or relationship is related to this perpetual wanting.
But anxiety is our base emotional state, not the elusive happiness. We feel loss much more than gain, so attaining the blissful, uncomplicated ephemeral feelings of what is commonly called ‘happiness’, that we search for and are reminded about constantly, actually gives us no emotional gain. So we are always on a search for the impossible, and, in life’s circular fashion, will come back to where we started.
Funny how a song can get you thinking.
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