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See more Be more Free more · Jun 1, 2025

Do you feel dissatisfied right now? Do you need more? Do you have many needs?

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Michele Bolitho · See more Be more Free more

Our fears beget our needs.

Beget is an unusual word I know. As I understand it, beget means to originate and generate. We don’t use beget very often but I think it’s perfect for discussing the creative power of our fears.

Our needs come from our fears. And our needs give us the lead for our attitudes and actions. Needs give our attitudes and actions their purpose and their aim, or their direction.

If we believe, for instance, that this world we share is fraught with constant risk, threat and danger, then we’ll be afraid that this is so. This fear will spawn an endless need for taking care and staying safe.

In this precarious daily setting we’re all familiar with, we're going to experience a need to watch ourselves. This will be our main attitude. We’ll experience a need to constantly take care for staying safe. This will be the purpose of the actions that we choose.

Our need for vigilance and self-protection will be our main motivator, even our compulsion. Motivated by our most basic need for our own survival, we'll put a lot of thought, time and effort into maintaining our protection and the best ways to stay safe. And we can’t feel safe whenever we are sure that we just don’t have enough.

What is need exactly? A need is a want, and a want is a sense of lack.

If we're looking at our world through a fear-affected lens, our needs will be many. We’ll see want and lack nearly everywhere we look – including when we look at our self-image.

When we see for sure there's not enough and this is what we’re genuinely afraid of, we'll be motivated in our everyday experience by a chronic and compelling need for more.

I haven’t got enough. I need more. How am I going to get it? The desire to acquire will be never-ending.

The appearance of lack and its sense of want is scary. How am I going to survive? Fear now perpetuates more fear.

The appearance of lack in our lives, in whatever form that shortfall takes in our perception, will naturally, instinctively, stimulate a need for more. This instinctive stimulation will compel us to tackle all inadequacy. We must get rid of want and lack. We have to get our needs met. They have to be full-filled.

I can’t see enough. I need more.

Somehow I must keep going.

I have to get myself the most I can.

Getting rid of need or want or lack can be achieved in many ways. We can recognise these wasy as familiar strategies in normal daily battle.

To yield us more of what we want and need and sense a lack of, we can compete, defeat and score some more. We can accumulate our winnings from our accomplishments to ideally, stave off any further sense of need. We can store and save whatever we’ ve acquired, as means of virtually insuring against any further scary shortfalls.

But while fear of lack remains our main mover, it's unlikely that the more that we gain in response to the stimulus of need, will ever be enough.

Enough will never be enough in our perception because fear of lack will continue to dominate our view. And that fear will continue to beget more needs. And as is normal in our modus operandi, or how we’ve mainly learned to live our daily lives, those needs will give purpose and aim to our attitudes and actions.

Need or What I want (or What I sense the lack of) will give us our direction in our everyday existence. Need will provide us with our goals. While need maintains its dominating presence in our consciousness, it will continue as our main concern and driver. We’ll continue to experience an endless need for more.

Because our fears will continue to beget more needs, enough therefore, will never be enough. It simply can’t be. Our needs won’t be fulfilled. In our attitude, we’ll remain dissatisfied. We’ll be unfulfilled and needy, always wanting more. We’ll know no other way.

Ever-aiming to attain a better yield that should reduce our present needs, we’ll keep trying to improve our actions of competing and defeating. We’ll look for better tactics to accomplish and accrue.

But while fear remains our main mover, our fears will constantly beget new needs.

Our needs will continue to be many. Our lives will feel like somehow something’s lacking – including something lacking in ourselves. And as for want, it will continue to dominate our personal perception and influence our attitudes and actions. We will keep on wanting more.

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Read the original on michelebolitho.substack.com

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