Live Oxymorons
The people who need people are the people who lose the lottery each week and live on welfare. I would not place them in the category of “lucky people.”
Maybe Barbra does.
One of my students recently told me how she barrages her boss with questions and problems throughout the day. Not because she can’t solve them herself, but because he needs to feel needed. Before, when she used to solve problems herself, the boss used to drive her crazy. He didn’t feel needed.
We all NEED to be NEEDED. The only thing we really want from others, is to be needed by them.
What a shame it would be if we died and no one showed up. On the tombstone it wrote, “Here lies What’s-His-Name. He really was redundant.”
Pretty tragic, don’t you think?
What is the value of one person above another in the pecking order of careers and jobs in the world? Isn’t it, the more needed they are, the more valuable? Isn’t the President of the United States just someone who does a very needed job?
So here lies our own personal oxymoron. On one hand, we want to be needed; on the other, we get aggravated when people bother us.
On the one hand, we want to be left alone; on the other, we love feeling important and vital.
Even though it is said that no one is indispensable, we like to think, “Not me.”
And in truth, Judaism teaches, no one can do what you can do. We are all necessary. G-d made just the right amount of French people, Germans and Chinese. He didn’t add a few million Chinese for extra luck. For some reason, just over a billion is the right number. Each with their own unique skills, to get the job done. No one is redundant.
To sum up with an old joke, there are only two things I worry about with my children when they grow up:
1) That they will still need me.
2) That they won’t still need me.
So, to rewrite that famous song, it’s “People who are needed by people, are the luckiest people in the world.”
There is a special blessing we say after certain kinds of food. It contains the phrase, “G-d created all things and their deficiencies.”
One man’s toothache is the dentist’s rent. One woman’s hair is the stylist’s car payment. None of us has everything we need, and all of us have some things more than others.
Our Sages tell us, if we have strength, help the weak. If we have money, help the poor. If we have wisdom, advise the needy.
When people are chasing me for something I have, I try to remember, it could always be worse….
They could leave me alone.