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[foxe]

Things I need to learn, #117 and #118: Moderation; and learning to monitor and respond appropriately to my own needs, physical, psychological and mental

Comments

[originaluddite]

I make this comment with the awareness that I am using simplistic rational concepts to apply to something much more complex and personal than that warrants. I will press on having noted that short-coming in this comment...

Your "I put off eating in favour of doing apparently more urgent or important things" made me think "she has re-arranged Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs" - http://changingminds.org/images/maslow.gif

I got to thinking of my own behaviour. Within circumstantial limits I respond to hunger or tiredness by eating or sleeping. I am in that sense acting as the animal that I am. And yet many of us - possibly moreso in the developed world - transcend that animal nature. Maybe this re-arranging of natural imperatives is uniquely human. Maybe that makes you more human than me.

[foxe]

That's a really interesting thought -- thanks for posting it! I suppose, using the visual metaphor of the pyramid, that the point at which we are forced to attend to the needs in the bottom tier is when what we have of them has shrunk enough that the rest of the structure becomes unstable. But 'prevention is better than cure', so I guess what I was thinking in the above post is that it would be good for me to recognise when these resources are starting to be depleted to the point of instability and to address them before the whole thing falls over