Pyramids & Puzzles

During my psychology studies, I came across many theories of personality and self-fulfillment. My favorite was the hierarchy of needs proposed by Abraham Maslow.

Maslow proposed a series of needs common to all humans and placed them in a pyramid shape, with five distinct levels, and the more basic needs appearing at the bottom of the structure. He believed that the lowest needs in the pyramid were shared by the entire animal kingdom.

The upper echelon of the pyramid comprised more advanced needs requiring human cognitive ability. Maslow postulated that human beings were not ready to achieve the higher levels of human development unless the most basic needs were met. That is, each individual had to complete successfully the levels in their exact sequence before venturing to a more complex level further up the pyramid.

The Levels of the Pyramid

A quick overview of the first level shows that the most primal needs are physiological – food, water, shelter, etc. These needs are the driving force behind survival and will be of utmost importance before any of the other human needs in the pyramid can be considered. Once these basic needs are met, the person can then venture on to the second level of the pyramid.

The second level represents the need for structure and security. Maslow asserted that after the basic needs are met, humans must feel safe. They must know that their home, village, lives, and property are safe. Also included in this level is the need for structure and predictability. Building on the basic need for food, a person must also be able to know that his/her meal will always be there, rather than doled out sporadically. For Maslow, it is the natural progression from looking for food on a moment to moment basis to hoarding (securing) it for days and months to come.

The third level of the pyramid structure takes a bit of a turn. Rather than concentrating inward on "self," the individual now looks outward. The individual develops a need to be loved and/or desired sexually. A new focus is to acquire family and friendships, and to feel belonging to a community. At this level of functioning, an individual realizes that s/he is not alone, and that having other people around not only provides help in a physical sense, but fulfils an emotional need.

The fourth level of the pyramid is the "esteem needs." To fulfill these needs requires both recognition from other people, which results in feelings of prestige, acceptance, and status, and self-esteem, which results in feelings of adequacy, competence, and confidence.

The apex of the pyramid structure is called self-actualization. Maslow believed that once a person had conquered the lower levels. the natural progression would be for the person to evolve into the best person that he or she could be. However, he ascertained that only a few people in the world would actually reach the level of self-actualization, or fulfilling their true potential. He developed a list of people he felt had self-actualized, and among them was Abraham Lincoln.

My Theory: Puzzle Pieces

Although Maslow stated that these levels were not permanent, and that individuals would ascend and descend the pyramid throughout their lifetime, critics have argued that the boundaries he proposed are not that demarcated. Personally, I do not believe that a person waits to attain level-three functioning before wanting to love and be loved. The need to feel loved is present in humans from birth. Much research has been done to show the devastation to the human psyche when humans are deprived of love.

Long before I entered university, I had a theory of my own. I proposed that life is like a puzzle, consisting of several pieces which contain the various components of our lives. Each of these pieces or components must come together to fit and complete the puzzle. Once our life puzzle is complete, we will feel complete or whole.

Even though, at that point, I had never heard of Abraham Maslow, his pyramid analogy and my puzzle analogy share a common theme. The completion of the puzzle resembles Maslow's concept of self-actualization.

If I were to construct my puzzle, the pieces would be spirituality, family, education, writing, career, money, friends, and volunteer work. The size of the actual pieces represents the intensity of the desire within me to achieve these wants, needs, and goals. For example, if I have a desire to achieve greatness, this piece of the puzzle would be rather large. Some lesser needs may actually disappear from the puzzle of life altogether. I used to have a desire to learn how to drive a car. I never learned how, and at this stage of my life, it is no longer a need or a desire. That puzzle piece has gone forever.

At the same time, other pieces may grow. When I was in high school, I knew that I was good at writing, but I just considered it to be part of the school curriculum, and I wrote simply because I had to. But after graduating from university, the desire to write grew to the point that I incorporate writing in my personal identity. I am a writer, I live to write, I am truly fulfilled when I write. Today, my writing takes more than a third of my personal life puzzle.

The Puzzle Pieces Don't Always Fit

Sometimes the pieces to our life puzzle fit together nicely and sometimes they do not. There are three reasons why this could happen.

1) Even though we have the desire and need to have something in our lives, we are not physically or emotionally ready for it.

After my divorce, I had a burning desire to join a social group and make new friends. The trouble was that I was painfully shy. The first evening I went to a gathering of strangers, I sat in the corner barely speaking. My desire to make friends was self-evident, but my inability to do so was not apparent until I was put in this uncomfortable position.

I threw out that piece of my puzzle, and retrieved it a year later when I went back to the same organization, and made myself known to everyone that very night. I was immediately invited to join the board of directors of that chapter, and my life changed.

2) Perhaps the pieces do not fit because they were never meant to be.

I had a friend who desperately wanted to be a hockey player. No matter how much he practiced, he just was not good enough to make it to the NHL. He kept trying until he was too old, and he knew his dream was gone forever. Yet he didn't throw the piece out; he reshaped the piece and added the new version to his life puzzle. He began coaching hockey at a local youth center.

3) Other times, the pieces do not fit properly, because we have conflicting values. We learn that we must fine-tune these values so that we can accommodate the different pieces intended to complete our puzzle.

My friend wanted a boyfriend desperately, or so she thought. She would date, but found something wrong with every man she met. They never got a second date. She wondered what she doing wrong. Why was she attracting all these "losers"?

It wasn't until she took a good hard look at herself and her behavior that she finally realized there was nothing innately wrong with these men. Although she wanted a boyfriend, she didn't want any man to tie her down. She knew that she couldn't be with someone and be alone at the same time. She needed – and found and married – a man who was independent and had a life outside of dating.

A Summary of the Life Puzzle

Every puzzle is different. It doesn't matter what your puzzle looks like, because it as unique as you are. The life puzzle is constantly evolving and revolving around various issues in life, without strict boundaries.

To reach the objective of one's life puzzle, to feel complete as a person, the life puzzle must come together as a whole. Until this happens, we keep on searching, revising, enlarging, fine-tuning our life puzzle so that it's a picture of what, at any given time, really matters the most to us.

What are the pieces in your puzzle?

Is it complete?

If not, which pieces are missing and why?

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