Can Everyone’s Needs Be Met?

One of the key premises of Nonviolent Communication is:

“Our world offers abundant resources for meeting needs. When human beings are committed to valuing everyone’s needs and have regained their skills for fostering connection and their creativity about sharing resources, we can overcome our current crisis of imagination and find ways to attend to everyone’s basic needs.” 

Someone from our support group questioned whether it is always possible to meet everyone’s needs. This family owns fewer cars than there are drivers in the home. Often, multiple family members need to use cars at the same time, and she wonders how it might be possible to meet everyone’s needs. 

Indeed, I'd love for every tree to be a desire tree that can grant all our needs and wishes. I wish I could ask the oak tree in my backyard for a Tesla. Alas, the material world is not a fairy tale land! So what do we mean when we see it's always possible to meet everyone's needs?

Firstly, in the above example, it is important to recognize that transportation is not a need. To find the need underneath the strategy, NVC trains us to ask the question, “If you had that, then what would you have?” One family member might need a car to visit a friend, in which case the need is for connection. Another family member might need a car to get to work, in which case the need is for financial stability for the family or professional growth for oneself. Another family member might need a car to go for a kirtan, in which case, the need is for spiritual upliftment and community. If everyone’s needs can be on the table, then we may not be attached to a specific strategy. The NVC approach will be to place all the needs on the table and for everyone to solve the dilemma together - to find ways to meet everyone’s needs. One family member might drop the other to the kirtan and take the car to go meet their friend. Or one might choose to connect with a friend virtually, recognizing the need for connection can be met in multiple ways. 

Having said this, here’s an important key intention of Nonviolent Communication,

“Living in peace with unmet needs: We aim to work with our feelings when we experience our needs as unmet, connecting with the needs, rather than insisting on meeting them.”

So when we talk of “meet” needs in NVC, we refer to acknowledging and getting in touch with them. Imagine shaking hands with your need, “Hello beautiful need, I see you, I acknowledge you, and sometimes, I mourn that you are not met.” 

NVC empowers us to sit in empathy with the pain of unmet needs. I have found time and time again that even when it is not possible to meet everyone’s needs in the family, acknowledging and mourning unmet needs allows us to hold the sweet pain of the unmet need together. Human beings, at the deepest level, want empathy, not that all their needs are met all the time. If I can sit with my children’s pain, in empathy, not to “fix it”, or “cheer them up”, or show them how privileged they are to even have 2 cars in the house, then, my children can come to a feeling of being held with care, knowing that their needs matter, even when they are not met.

Another key premise of NVC is,

"Our capacity for peace is not dependent on having our needs met."

We currently have a dilemma in front of us. During our next trip to India, my husband would like to prolong the time he spends with his disabled father. I would like to attend the yatra in its entirety. Perhaps we’ll find a way to meet both our needs. Or perhaps we won’t. What is important is that we "meet" both our needs with compassion, i.e., we acknowledge the beauty of each of our needs. We express equal care for our needs, through dialogue and discussion, not through power-over, guilt-inducing tactics that manipulate the other. Then, even if some of our needs are unmet, we have togetherness in mourning the sweet pain of that need. We know that we matter to each other.

What are your thoughts on meeting everyone's needs?

Imagine shaking hands with your need, “Hello beautiful need, I see you, I acknowledge you, and sometimes, I mourn that you are not met.”