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What Do You Need That You Could Have Right Now?
I want to ask people: what do you need that you can have right now?
As we all know, so many moments of our lives are taken up by what we need. In civilized society, it is quite a drill, and a relentless drill at that: we need a decent education, we need a good job, we need a life partner, we need the perfect wedding, we need to have a baby, (or a good baby sitter,) we need loving friends, we need good health, money, success, prestige, good entertainment, a deluxe vacation, and sometimes more than those.
But in my life, and possibly in yours, sometimes there are little things that are right off center stage and overlooked. I suggest we try to search a bit for them so they can become fulfilling. Even if those little things are not anywhere on the list. Then open your heart to letting them in.
One of my happiest childhood memories is from a weekend when my folks visited our Chicago neighbors. This family owned not only the nicest house in our neighborhood, but a lakeside cottage just shy of the Wisconsin border.
Everything was going along as it always did – us kids had trooped down to the lake on Saturday morning and goofed off. Then we swam for a bit.
Finally we trudged back to the cottage, all sandy and wet. We soon shared a large communal breakfast, just the seven kids and four adults. Then all 11 of us went back to the lake, where we indulged in sun bathing and more swimming. Around 3 p.m., everyone once again sought refuge in the cottage. The adults jimmied up some drinks, while we kids looked for something new to do outside.
One of us discovered a piece of rope, just the right length to make games of double dutch and plain old jump rope quite a lot of fun. The gravel driveway under the huge elm trees was the perfect shady spot.
What happened next is why it became a forever memory. Our whoops of joy attracted the grown-ups, who might have been a wee bit bored of playing pinochle the fourth Saturday in a row. All of them came down the cottage stairs, and took up places in line. Their faces gleamed with anticipation of taking their turns at jumping rope.
If you have never witnessed four “thirty somethings,” slightly stewed by sun and beer, attempting to learn double dutch, you have not lived. It is especially fine if those adults are your parents, who normally behave like pillars of respect offering sedate wisdom like: “No eating those gooey sandwiches on the new living room couch.”
So it was that our parents stumbled through the gauntlet of the turning rope. To say they were clumsy in their attempts at mastering the maneuvers would be an understatement. Some adults thought if we turned the rope more slowly they would shine at this art. None of them were proven right. As the rope slowed down, it made it more likely that it would stall and entangle the adult jumper.
No one could stop laughing. I don’t know how long we engaged in the activity, but everyone involved slept well that night.
I thought of that memory last night when trying hard to make sense of my life. There is a lot on my plate right now. My husband and I are trying to take our business to the next level. When things like this are going on, I miss my two closest friends who both died some time ago, both before their sixtieth birthdays. Having them to brainstorm with would be almost heavenly.
A close friend is mad at me over a minor matter, and I know it has to do with how her mom died recently. This friend was taught not to express emotions, so she will not grieve her loss. But she did find a way to express some emotion: she got mad at me.
Finding sleep impossible, I pleaded with the universe to offer me a moment of sheer relief and happiness. After all, at 1 a.m., it is unlikely I will come up with the perfect business plan for the new direction the company is heading. It is also not possible to talk things out with a friend at 1 a.m., even if I expect they might be as much of an insomniac as me.
But something told me to give up trying to sleep in bed. Instead I went out in the living room and squeezed onto the love seat that serves as my dog’s nightly domain. It was so cozy there: in no time, I found all my concerns and problems dropping away. And when I quit fidgeting over how small the love seat is, in terms of letting a 5’10” person fall asleep, I almost immediately found a perfect sleeping position. This position was fetal in nature and velvet to the touch. The added bonus was it was offering my dog’s warmth to shield me from the cold hitting us both when the fireplace embers died down.
I woke up, feeling loved and protected, and I noticed my back had finally gone back into place.
So where is your need that can be fulfilled right now? Is it in your snow-christened driveway, with some of the kids on a sled? Or is it tucked in the corner of your living room? Request the universe help you find your need’s fulfillment. Give it a moment and allow yourself to be a grown up waiting to take a turn at learning double dutch.
I hope it comes to you. (For anyone liking longer weekends, it is possible it already has.)
And remember to be thankful when this gift is received.
Published in General
Often, what I need that I could have immediately is the sense of accomplishment when I get work done. So, bucking what feels easy and getting into a task, or doing some exercise, or finishing a chore makes me happiest. So I should get off Ricochet very soon and get to it.
I enjoyed your vacation memory and am glad you found a place to get some sleep.
Lovely
I need a literary agent!
I need more OPs like this one on Ricochet.
Are you sure you need a literary agent?
Stephen King himself backed off from giving his stuff to his agent to submit to major publisher. (And he had an agent he liked – not one of the horrid literary shark-guys that are in the game to add young men to their sex lives.)
His agent took him to whatever huge publishing conglomerate that published his books. Now at the time, mid 1990’s, King was getting fabulous advances, that most mere mortals can only dream of.
His agent mentioned to him prior to this visit that his writing was bringing in in a full 17% of the profit this publishing giant received from all sources of income. Yet as they walked about the halls of the company, none of the VP’s he was introduced to even knew who he was. Here he was, one of our nation’s top writers, whose ability to bring everyone from 10 year olds to housewives to manly men into stores to buy his books was totally beyond belief. But ignored!
As the VPs didn’t care to meet him or say “Hi. How are you?”
He went home and did the math and started self publishing. Why settle for 6% when you can have the whole enchilada?
When we started our publishing venture, it cost us $ 6,000 to have 1500 books printed. That was 18 years ago. Now anyone with 2 to 3 hundred bucks can work with a print on demand publisher like Lightning Source and start getting their books printed.
It is important to have a marketing strategy. It is important to have a website. There are decent books to guide you through this. You need to be able to find someone who is an audience driven resource. For us, my spouse gets on George Noory several times a year. (Coast to coast AM, where everything from alien landings to Big Foot adventures to near life experiences are discussed. This niche fits his metaphysical writings perfectly.)
Joe Rogan would be another person to cultivate. If your writing has a niche, join groups like “Civil War historians” or “Submarine enthusiasts of America.” (I am making those up, for the idea.)
Almost anyone can get a contract with Amazon. This is an absolute necessity for book distribution. Our paychecks from 2009 to ’12 existed due to Chinese people interested in our books. Without Amazon, they would never have heard about them. (I still despise Amazon, as they are going to own the world very soon. But they are the only devil on the planet doing what they do.)
Big publishers do not do much in terms of marketing these days. So unless you’re sure you can get the same type of decent agent King had to begin with, it might be wise to pursue self publishing.
Me, too!
@caroljoy, your post is exactly what I needed today. Thank you! May the universe continue to bless you with the needs you don’t know you have!
@okiesailor
Shauna, I feel humbled by the appreciation you and OkieSailor offered. I basically woke up with this essay in mind and it finished itself while I scrambled the eggs for yesterday’s breakfast.
Just writing about the memories of that childhood weekend brightened my day. I am glad that they brightened your day too.
Your reply reminds me of a fellow writer who once admitted at one of our literary critiquing sessions that he “didn’t always care to write,” but always liked the feeling after he finished writing and found he had done a good job.
Writing can be hard lonely work, and sometimes mopping a floor seems preferable.
But as I get older, I find writing about the good parts of my life can be very enjoyable.
I’m already self published. However, I think it would be pretty cool for a traditional publisher like Random House to print my stuff . . .
I need to finish my novel-in-progress so I can give this a try. My dreams are pretty low-key. If I sell more than 10 books, I’ll call it a success.
I think the moral of this story is “get a dog.”
I so relate to this feeling. My life has been so good, selling a handful of books that readers enjoy would just be gravy. Actually, I’m not a huge gravy person, so maybe more like frosting on the cake.
I’ve learned that one of the things I need is novelty. (I’m not alone in this: neurological research shows that novel experiences are an important part of what makes us happy.) Unfortunately, I am also a creature of habit, so I tend to spend a lot of time following the same daily routines. I take comfort in the familiarity, but after a while it starts to feel oppressive. Life is about accumulating new experiences, and when one week is exactly like the last, you’re not really doing that.
Vacations and special occasions help with this, but you can’t go on vacation all the time. (And if you did, it wouldn’t really be a vacation anymore, would it?) But I learned a while back that I can actually find little moments of novelty in much more modest ways. It really doesn’t take much.
There was one day when I was feeling particularly boxed in by the demands of the routine; I was coming out of Walmart, having just bought some groceries or something, and it could have been any one of a thousand other times I’d done the same thing. So instead of getting in the car and driving home, I took a little walk around the perimeter of the parking lot, trying to be “mindful” — not thinking about anything, but just taking in the sensations of where I was. The parking lot was adjacent to some undeveloped land, so on the other side of a chain-link fence I could see trees and grass and birds. I listened to the sounds I could hear, paid attention to the details of the cars I passed, and stopped thinking about whatever it was I needed to do next.
It was, all told, only about five minutes out of my day. But it was several years ago now, and although I don’t remember anything else from that day (or even that month), I remember those five minutes.
There must be three dozen people here alone who would immediately buy any book you self published.
And if one of us could get Peter Robinson to notice your book, you might do far better than that!
Plus I would gladly make it a condition of new clients of my spouse to buy your book before they can become clients.
I find your writing to be something unique and your pieces here are items I treasure.
You might be surprised . . .