When Being Needed Becomes Part of Who We Are
An October musing on being needed, being wanted, and remembering who we are beyond our roles.
Autumn always seems to pull me back into the kitchen. The moment the air gets colder, apparently I decide the appropriate response is cinnamon. Cinnamon rolls. Apple pies. Coffee while something is baking. That warm smell travelling through the house while autumn is doing its colder, darker thing outside. It might be my early Christmas mode beginning. I make no apologies.
But this October has also taken me outside. I've been to the pumpkin fields twice already - more than ever before - and one of my favourite parts wasn't really the pumpkins at all.
It was watching my daughter laughing with her friends on the little vintage funfair.
There is something strangely tender about watching your child have a wonderful time in a world that doesn't require you to create every part of it. You are there. But you're not needed in quite the same way. And perhaps that's why a question I've been writing about lately has followed me home:
Who are you when nobody needs anything from you?
Not forever. Just today. No crisis to solve. No one waiting for your advice. Nobody asking you to organise, fix, carry or remember something.
For people who are used to being dependable, that can feel surprisingly unfamiliar.
Being needed is very clear. Someone asks. We help. Something goes wrong. We step in.
Someone we love is struggling. We carry a little of the weight. And there is something beautiful in that. I don't think caring is a habit we need to cure ourselves of. But perhaps, somewhere along the way, being useful can quietly begin to feel like evidence that we matter. And then life changes. Children grow. People we once helped find their own feet.
Relationships change shape. Jobs end. Responsibilities move on. Or sometimes nothing dramatic happens at all. Everyone is simply… okay today. And suddenly there is a little empty space where our usefulness normally sits.
When Being Needed Becomes Part of Who We Are
I think there are seasons when love looks like carrying someone. And there are seasons when love looks like watching them walk without you carrying anything at all. Perhaps the second one can be harder than we expect. Because when someone needs us, we know exactly where we belong. But when someone simply wants us? That's quieter.
Come for coffee. Stay a little longer. I saw this and thought of you. Come walk with me.
There is no task hidden inside those sentences. Nothing to fix. Nothing to earn. Just a place beside someone. And perhaps that's one of the loveliest - and strangely most vulnerable - kinds of belonging.
You could manage without me. And you still want me here.
Maybe a life becoming less dependent on us isn't evidence that we're becoming less important. Sometimes it is evidence that something we loved has grown well.
I think about that as my daughter grows. And I suspect I'll think about it again while waiting to see whether my grown-up son turns the pumpkin we brought home for him into something spectacular… or leaves it sitting there looking perfectly round and unemployed.
Either way, I am beginning to appreciate something: Not everything we love needs a job.
And perhaps neither do we.
What makes you glad to be here?
This may be the more interesting question. When nobody needs anything from you for an hour, what do you naturally move towards? Not what would be productive. Not what you should use the time for. Not what could become content, income, a qualification or another goal. What simply catches your attention? A walk you've never taken. A book.
Music that makes you move around the kitchen. Calling someone not because they need support, but because you miss their laugh. Baking something unnecessarily delicious on a Monday afternoon. Sitting somewhere beautiful and contributing absolutely nothing to the scenery. The trees will manage. They have some experience ;)
Maybe these little things don't look important enough to tell us who we are. But perhaps that's precisely why they're worth noticing. They belong to us before we make them useful.
Perhaps usefulness answers “Why am I here?” very quickly.
But a quieter life sometimes asks a better question: “What makes me glad I am?”
I like that question. I don't think we need to answer it with anything grand. Maybe this week we could simply notice. Notice what we keep looking at. What makes us lose track of time. Where we feel a little more alive. What we'd still enjoy even if nobody saw us doing it.
And the next time a small empty space appears in the day, perhaps we don't have to immediately give it employment. Maybe we can live inside it for a while. That's what I'm learning this October.
Outside, the season is changing. Inside, there is cinnamon in the air. There are pumpkins waiting to become ridiculous faces, children growing into lives increasingly their own, and ordinary moments I don't want to hurry past. Not every empty space needs filling. Not every lovely thing needs a purpose. And we don't have to stop being helpful, caring or dependable. Perhaps we only need to remember that underneath all the roles we perform for other people, there is still a whole human being. Someone with curiosities. Preferences.
Ridiculous ideas. Places they want to see. Things that make them come alive.
You don't have to be necessary to belong. Sometimes you can simply be here. And maybe, for one quiet October afternoon, that is more than enough.
From my little corner of October to yours,
Eva
"From My Diary… i don't think I love autumn because everything becomes beautiful. I think I love it because everything becomes a little more noticeable. The warmth of the kitchen when the windows are cold. Cinnamon lingering in the house long after the baking is finished. Maybe that is what this season does to me. It makes me want to gather ordinary moments before they quietly become memories. Not because I am afraid of them passing. Just because I am finally old enough to know that they will. So this autumn, I am trying not to hold life tighter. Only to notice it better. And perhaps that is my kind of letting go - loving what is here without asking it to stay exactly as it is."
Stay a little longer…
If this little October musing left you with something to think about, you might like to stay with the question a little longer. Watch: Who Are You When Nobody Needs You? | A Quiet Reflection on Identity. This is the longer reflection that first led me here - into being needed, being wanted, the roles we carry, and who we might meet when life gives us a little more room to simply be.
And if your mind is already looking at that room and wondering what useful thing it could possibly do with it… Read, Why Do I Feel Guilty When I’m Doing Nothing? A little September reflection for anyone whose inner supervisor still believes an empty moment should probably be given a job.
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