Note: This article is based on a blog post by Evan Traver, in which he tells us about his experience camping in the wilderness and how it positively impacted his mental health.
Humans have five basic needs
We, as humans, are very dependent and attached to others, and we have needs that no one can deny. We have evolved in this way. According to the psychologist Abraham Maslow, our needs are divided into five levels.
Human needs are represented in Maslow's theory by a hierarchy called Maslow's hierarchy of personal needs. According to this theory, our desires and needs are divided into five categories, arranged from the most basic to the most luxurious. Maslow believes that it is impossible to feel a higher need before satisfying a lower need.
The pyramid of needs for all human beings begins with the most essential human needs for survival, which are food, drink, and shelter. These physiological needs are the most important, to the extent that it is impossible for a person to accomplish anything without first satisfying these needs. This is why these needs are the basis for all human desires.
The need for security comes after the need for survival because, after we have satisfied those needs, it becomes necessary to maintain them permanently in order to prolong our lives as much as possible. This kind of security manifests as a method of survival, which is living in a group.
Once we have security through living in a group, whether this group is friends, family, or a community, we start to feel love and belonging to that group, which ensures that we remain safe as long as we are part of this group. In addition, this belonging gives our existence a sense of meaning in life and a sense of belonging.
At this point, our needs began to evolve from being material needs to emotional needs. Prior to this point, all our needs were based on the survival instinct, but now that love and belonging increase our chances of survival within the group, our emotional health becomes a strong human need.
Needs started to diverge from this point forward. In the hierarchy of our human wants, appreciation comes after love. We want others to respect us, as self-esteem is necessary for human mental health, and our inability to satisfy this need is the reason for many cases of depression that prevail in human societies.
If we don't feel appreciated, we don't feel good enough, and we start looking for excuses and stories to support our feelings of worthlessness. The psychologist Tara Brach says, "Satisfying our need to feel appreciated is essential in our specific search for meaning in life, as the person who feels their importance has the confidence and ability to direct their life in the direction they want.”
After we have satisfied our need for appreciation, we are left with the need for self-actualization. If possible, humans can satisfy this need by realizing their highest potential and achieving their individual goals. Anyway, we all know that nothing is perfect, and it is possible that the meaning to which you have devoted most of your life cannot be achieved or fulfilled.
So logically, there is no way to achieve maximum potential, and therefore no way to self-actualization This means that we will always feel like we need something, and it seems that we are doomed to a chronic feeling of dissatisfaction. But, let me tell you, that's not the truth, fortunately.
Reduce your needs
A few weeks ago, I went on a snow camping trip in a Californian forest with a group of friends. We walked 5 kilometers through snow and sometimes over 10 feet of high drifts. We wore snowshoes and carried backpacks with the equipment we needed to camp where we were going to stay for a few days, where we would walk and explore.
It may sound crazy, but that's what happened. I learned a very important lesson from it, which is that when all your actions stem from your physiological need to survive, all your basic emotional needs are greatly reduced. In these circumstances, it is likely that you will feel calm and content. Imagine camping in the snow, where there is no liquid water and you have to boil ice with a backpacker's stove to stay hydrated.
At an altitude of 8,500 feet on foot, you will lose a lot of bodily fluids very quickly, apart from food. We had some dry food, but if you want to stay healthy, you will need some hot food, which requires hot water, and that means more ice boiling using the stove.
Moreover, we had to dig ditches to protect our tents from the wind. Also, we had to wear snowshoes and walk away from the camp just to use the bathroom, which is apparently a tree.
The point is that even the simplest tasks required a relatively large amount of energy, and these tasks were essential to our survival. This made us almost unable to think of anything else. Yet, there was a beautiful side to this life because we were living in this period only to satisfy the first two needs in the hierarchy that we talked about.
We had no time to think about appreciation and self-actualization; it was only the need to live. In this period, I experienced a feeling of calmness that I had never experienced before and a feeling of complete conviction that I was doing only the things that I needed to do. How wonderful it is to live in order to satisfy your primary needs, which have become easily satisfied in our contemporary world to the point that we have forgotten that they are needs in the first place.
There is always a possibility of feeling like belonging
When you focus on your most basic needs, something else happens. Lower desires naturally help you fulfill your higher needs without even realizing it. When you're camping in an area with 7–10 feet of snow, the main tasks become constant combat.
Therefore, this makes you feel the need to rely on others and ensure your survival in a group. When each person does their duty and uses their skills, the group has a greater chance of success without wasting energy resources. Naturally, when you become part of a group aiming to obtain greater security—even social security in our contemporary world—you begin to feel a sense of belonging to the group.
There is a deep sense of friendship among group members. They were working collectively towards a common goal, and each depended on the others. Therefore, each one feels like they belong, and thus the need for belonging is satisfied without making any deliberate effort.
In the forest that we camped in, without social media and people pointing at your faults and criticizing you vitriol, and by being in a small group of people who look up to you positively because of your contribution as a member of the group, it becomes easier to achieve the fourth need, which is to feel appreciation.
Your self-confidence increases dramatically, as does your self-esteem and sense of self-worth, because you are sure that what you are doing directly helps someone in the group or even the whole group. The people you are with respect you for the value you add to the whole group. So, with only self-actualization remaining as a need, you have fulfilled your potential and purpose, as your potential and skills are entirely directed at helping the group to continue. So there is nothing left that you need or want.
Your physiological and emotional desires have been satisfied because of the satisfaction you feel by accomplishing basic and important tasks at the same time. Now compare this to how we express our emotional needs today. All our needs, or at least the basic ones, have been satisfied without us even realizing it, and we find no pleasure or significance in stability or security because we rarely feel anxious about these blessings.
Anyway, as we've satisfied our basic needs in today's world, why not focus more on our third need, which is the feeling of belonging?
Unfortunately, by using social media and other tools, we have become very far from life within a human group, which makes us search for belonging all the time.
While we do not feel integrated, we assume that there is something wrong with our personalities, and therefore we are not able to gain appreciation and self-actualization. This is the reason for many cases of depression and anxiety that people suffer from in society.
Many grow up with this fear of not being good enough, but this fear won't exist when you live with 10 people in the wild and the group depends on you for clean water.
The point is that, despite how simple life has become, we are unaware of just how vast our options are. We have plenty of time, but we waste it worrying about specific things like passion because we no longer have to make any effort or spend any time trying to survive. The paradox is that conscious focus on basic needs helps satisfy higher needs.
In conclusion
From now on, don't take your basic needs for granted. Instead, focus on the pleasure you get from the consistent satisfaction of your most basic desires. Appreciate the blessing of water and the abundance of food. Cheer up when your car breaks down, because you can ride public transportation anyway. When you have extra time to think, use that time to develop skills and experiences that increase your appreciation for life as it is.
This does not mean that you should not have big goals. What we mean is that you should have a direction in life towards achieving your goal, then enjoy and rejoice in every action you take in your daily life that leads you towards achieving your goal.
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