Toilets and Relationship dynamics
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Winter
 May 30 2023
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    I was in the car driving E, age 4.5, and her mom.

    E had just had to go potty and that delayed us a few min. on the way to the slime museum.


    I asked, "Why do we go to the toilet but the toilet never comes to us?"


    This is an example of something that would elicit, "William, your weird" from my best friend's mom when growing up.


    E didn't have a response but her mother did.


    "It's because the toilet doesn't need us. But we need the toilet. That's why we go to it but it never comes to us."


    If you look at movement of animals, of people, something is animating us- desire (to go towards or to leave from), sense of need, fear.


    These are the motivators. Providing answers to the question as to why.

    Why is he going there or why is he doing that? Or why is he not doing that?


    Being in a state of need often has little to do with literal actual need. Feeling of needs satisfied- there is nothing better. Going from great distress to baseline is much more pleasurable than going the same distance from baseline to pleasure.


    But the problem with need is that it immediately restricts you in your life to that thing itself. Your whole life must be temporarily put on hold until you have emptied your bladder or bowels, for example.


    That example is not the best to illustrate people who tend to live in a world based on feeling of needs- just going from one to the next. It must be a miserable existence. One need satisfied only allowing you to be aware of the next need on deck.


    Need = immediate restriction = no opportunity for freedom.


    Although the opposite of being in need is not being in need, as nature (and the brain) abhor a vacuum, practically speaking, either you are the needy or the needed. And because we want to be free (from need)- to be free to be free, it is better to be needed than to be needy. Although being constantly needed can be overwhelming and incarcerating, it is still better than the incarceration and helplessness of being in immediate and intense need.


    It is said that because G-d is all perfect and powerful, He is without needs. But that model may not be true. He apparently employed, "the ends justify the means" to restrict His power so that we could have space to exercise our own. The purpose in that was to give us free will choice.


    If He was perfect in the sense of "perfectly complete" He wouldn't have had to create us (or anything).


    But, in contrast, there are things that absolutely don't need us. Stones. Idols. Toilets.


    It seems like, in a relationship, there is a continuum that extends between being needed like a toilet and being needy.


    Being too much on one side of the continuum isn't ideal. That said, I would rather be a bit eccentric from the center and be more like the toilet than like the king who sits on it. Which brings up the dynamic and likelihood of being pooped on when you are most needed.


    Now, if you consider yourself as plural, which is useful and probably correct, in any given moment you are probably always in need and in part able to satisfy the feeling of need. You are both the king who needs to be supported by his throne and the throne, itself. The throne supports the king and the king supports the kingdom.


    If you can develop that ability- to self-soothe, then you can, like Atlas, not just support yourself but support those around you as well- if you wanted to. (If you needed to then that is a co-dependent relationship). No toilet needs you to go to it. That's why it never makes one step in your direction. That said, it is able to function as a toilet and fulfill its purpose in its life without needing you to fulfill it. Need is non-specific. If not you, someone else will use the toilet. And if nobody does, that's OK with the toilet. It will continue to be available to the best of its ability.


    So which would you rather- to poop on someone or to be pooped on?

    And, which would you rather, being needy or needed?

    need want needy god toilet idol stone free will freedom
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