To Please People

We tend to operate with the view that the best way to please people is not to bother them too much. We keep many of our dilemmas and confusions away from those we like, for fear of irritating or inconveniencing them and so spoiling the relationship. But our analysis is missing a key detail of human psychology: we like to be bothered. Not at all time and over all things, nor at the expense of our own critical needs, but fundamentally, we have a powerful urge to feel helpful. We need to be needed. All of us suffer from a fear of superfluity, which the requirements of others has a critical capacity to appease. We can pick this theme up in the realm of work. Work is at its most gratifying when it affords us a feeling that we have, over the course of the day, managed to appease the suffering or increase the pleasure of another person. There are so many stories of being exhausted by the requests of others; too few of the delight we experience when we turn around someone else's distress, boredom or craving. We can't ultimately feel our valuable sides until we are called upon to exercise them: we don't have a sense of our strength until someone else needs us to lift something; we can't feel intelligent until someone asks us to solve an issue; we can't feel wise until we've been brought in to adjudicate a dispute. We rely on the needs of others to remind us of what we're capable.