The need to be needed

On a recent warm summer evening, I had the opportunity to sit with a bondhu (friend) and ruminate on the currents of life. We talked of many things, as friends often do, but eventually our conversation turned toward the writings of the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972). Heschel had suggested, with characteristic clarity, that one of the deepest yearnings of the human condition is the need to be needed. My wise bondhu expanded on this deceptively simple idea with a precision that was at once philosophical and painfully practical. His words left us both in a silence that was not empty, but heavy with recognition. Later, as I drove back through the dusky warmth of the summer night, Heschel’s claim began to throb within me. The yearning to be needed seemed not merely a distant insight from a philosopher’s pen, but a reality woven into my own life — and into the lives of all of us. Often, we are reminded that we are not needed. Sometimes this comes bluntly, through circumstances that strip away roles and responsibilities we once held. Other times it arrives more subtly, through the indifference or carelessness of those around us. The absence of inclusion, the withholding of a place in conversations or activities, quietly but powerfully communicates “you are not needed here.” I have elsewhere argued, drawing from my bondhu’s reflections, about the acute importance of being acknowledged. Acknowledgment matters. ”What would your life be like if no one acknowledged you?” Yet Heschel takes us into even deeper waters. For acknowledgment, however necessary, is not the same as being needed. To be acknowledged may assure us that others see us; to be needed assures us that others depend on us, that our presence is woven into the fabric of their lives. The first satisfies visibility; the second satisfies value. And here lies Heschel’s profundity: the deprivation of the need to be needed is not a small wound. It is a form of social death. We may still be respected, even celebrated, with the customary photograph or the perfunctory felicitation. But if beneath the surface we are no longer needed, these gestures become hollow — an elaborate theater masking the deep human despair of being unnecessary. To be needed is primal. It is the affirmation that one’s life is not ornamental, but essential to the ongoing work of others. Philosophers such as Heschel give us the compass for this truth, but the terrain is encountered in the everyday — in what I once called the “down and dirty” of social life. Every person, at some point, will meet the bitter recognition: I am no longer needed. For many, this realization comes with age. The once-urgent presence of the elder becomes an afterthought in a society obsessed with youth: “You are not in our phase of life anymore.” For others, the exclusion is drawn from temperament. The quiet one in the group is sidelined — “she doesn’t talk much.” Those who look different, think differently, or do not fit the easy categories of belonging are ignored with a shrug — “does he even know what we are talking about?” Exclusion, after all, is easier than inclusion. It is simpler to form an inner circle than to extend the boundaries outward. And in the smug security of special relationships, the outsider is quickly forgotten. This is precisely what Heschel warns us against: the devastating ease with which we crush another’s need to be needed. For the “ancient,” the “weird,” and the “other,” the primal human longing is no different than our own. They, too, deserve the dignity of necessity. Yet in the exuberance of being at the center of our own stories, we forget. We act without malice, perhaps, but our carelessness accomplishes the same end: the quiet killing of another’s significance. Once performed, this act of social death cannot be undone. The one excluded remains marked, carrying the memory of having been deemed unnecessary. The tragedy of this realization echoes through culture and song. The Beatles, in their deceptively light refrain, captured the sting of parents realizing they are no longer central in their child’s world: “She (what did we do that was wrong) /Is having (we didn’t know it was wrong) /Fun (fun is the one thing that money can’t buy).”