So much of what we need is for sale. If you want someone to touch you kindly and be affirming, there’s always the hairdresser, or the nail technician, or a paid-for massage. If you need to talk to someone sympathetic, there are counsellors, therapists and life coaches. Any human need you have, you can pay some other human to answer. Some of the options of course being more legal than others…
I’ve been thinking for a while about the way in which commerce and human relationships intersect. Money is our primary expression of valuing people, so when we don’t pay for services rendered, we don’t always value what’s done for us. But, when we put a price tag on things sometimes we lose that sense of duty to each other. Natural and non-financial modes of caring and sharing may become distorted by the dynamics of seller and client.
With loneliness known to be on the rise, there must be increasing numbers of people who could only hope to meet their basic needs for human contact, by paying for it. And with poverty on the rise, paying to meet your basic needs becomes ever less feasible for many people.
I have no simple ‘we should be doing this’ answers to this area of experience. It bothers me that if you can’t afford to pay someone to meet your emotional needs, you may struggle to have those needs met in other ways. It bothers me that we are often so isolated from each other that some of us have to pay to have people touch us kindly or listen to us carefully. At the same time I’m deeply grateful that there are people who have taken these areas on professionally and can bring training and experience to bear when we need them.
What do we give? What do we assume others should do for us? What do we willingly pay for? What do we think should be done for free? What worth do we ascribe and how does that connect with what we pay? Answers to such questions are of course always going to be personal. I am certain they are questions we need to ask ourselves.
August 4th, 2019 at 11:50 am
Great post 🙂
August 5th, 2019 at 10:18 am
thank you!
August 4th, 2019 at 12:19 pm
Good food for thought. I wonder how many people actually give any thought to the quality of our human interactions. How many compensate for the inadequacies through pets..? If I had the time, I think we could have a very interesting conversation about this topic.
August 5th, 2019 at 6:29 am
Pets are good for the tactile stuff, certainly. People do seem to find them easier than people…
August 7th, 2019 at 10:38 am
Yep, unconventional love, and very little emotional risk compared to other humans.
August 4th, 2019 at 4:45 pm
Check out the great posts on mutual kindness and care for people with mental health issues on the “Unhinged and Unenlightened” blog. They’re very good.
August 4th, 2019 at 4:48 pm
Linkage
https://unhingedandunenlightened.wordpress.com/2019/07/27/a-pagan-framework-for-healing-coping-with-mental-illness-how-to-help-out-a-friend-part-one/
https://unhingedandunenlightened.wordpress.com/2019/07/31/a-pagan-framework-for-healing-coping-with-mental-illness-how-to-help-out-a-friend-part-two/
August 4th, 2019 at 4:52 pm
Also on a related note, I wrote about different exchanges of energy including financial transactions
https://dowsingfordivinity.com/2015/06/27/pagans-and-money-2/
Someone commented that we do maintain connections with people we pay to do things because human connection and friendliness forms — we go back to the nice hairdresser or the nice osteopath.
August 7th, 2019 at 10:40 am
That’s true, now that I think about it. Sometimes we even make a new friend through our business transactions.
August 7th, 2019 at 10:47 am
A lot of my work is related to creative stuff, or activism, so I have made a number of good friends through work, along the way. Married to a man who was sent to me by a publishing house!
August 10th, 2019 at 9:20 pm
Just a quick response to the person who said there’s very little emotional risk in having a pet. There’s only little risk if you don’t care too much for them. Their lifespans alone guarantee there’s risk. Also, in my experience, the love for pets or animals has nothing to do with the number or quality of human connections. A love for pets is its own connection–not a substitute for something else.
August 12th, 2019 at 7:16 am
It’s funny, as someone who takes in elderly cats, I live with that mortality issue, but I never thought of it as an emotional risk… I suppose because the inevitable heartbreak is something I’ve chosen, and because it is no sort of rejection.
August 12th, 2019 at 7:37 pm
Maybe it’s different when you raise them from kittens, but I’ve also found that knowing death is imminent doesn’t make the heartbreak any less. Other people seem less moved about these things, though, so maybe it’s just me.
August 13th, 2019 at 8:14 am
I was with one of my older cats when she died, and it was heartbreaking, and I miss her, and even so I can’t think of that as ‘difficult’ because it isn’t, it’s a very uncomplicated sort of love for me.
August 13th, 2019 at 9:31 pm
I’m having trouble reconciling how something that’s heartbreaking can also not be considered an emotional risk. In any case, for me it is, for what that’s worth.
August 14th, 2019 at 7:19 am
because I can absolutely live with that, because uncomplicated pain is not going to kill me but there are other emotional experiences that have pushed me towards wanting to kill myself.
August 14th, 2019 at 1:32 pm
I’m sorry to hear that. I think we’ve been having two separate discussions this whole time, though, so I hope you don’t mind if I leave off here.
August 14th, 2019 at 1:34 pm
No worries.