Human beings meet needs through interdependent relationships: We meet many of our needs through our relationships with other people and with nature, though some needs are met principally through the quality of our relationship with ourselves and for some, with a spiritual dimension to life. When others’ needs are not met, some needs of our own also remain unmet.
~ Miki Kashton, NVC Trainer
That last line particularly moves me. I am thinking of all the depression in this country. Not only among people without much, but in people who have security, family, and health. Prozac is a very popular drug. And though the rest of us may not be clinically depressed, most of us have a low lying sense of anxiety from the sense of despair and hopelessness emanating from the people who have no security. We are group animals. We are wired to cared about another and more than that we are wired by mirror neurons to feel another's pain. When we turn on the TV and see starvation or war, we feel it.
Our natural empathy drives us to join others in such movements as Occupy Now, even when we are personally doing OK. I saw a picture of a woman recently with a sign saying that she was a member of the 1%, so tax her to share with others. And the ferocious methods of the police in New York come out of the pain of seeing people distressed over financial unfairness. The Wall Street investors cannot help but feel that pain and their response is to try to remove the unhappy people. Over and over people demonstrate their need for others to get their needs met. In some ways, people are all Bodhissatvas, we can't find real peace in Nirvana till all are at peace.
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