Being needed.
At virtually any point in your life, it feels good to be needed. Knowing that someone specifically needs your help gives us a sense of belonging and purpose, but also a sense, however big or small, of authority and wisdom.
Now, the rub is that this feeling is often just a facade. At the end of the day, there is very little any one of us offers that someone else can’t provide. Even those closest to us, our most intimate of relationships, are not truly built around a “need” for one another (it’s rather a combination of desire and a sense of gratification).
That said, the most authentic, genuine need I can imagine is the need that a newborn child has for its parents. I look at this beautiful boy in front of me, for whole everything is foreign and new, see him whimper, his lip quivering, and know, “He NEEDS us.” Truly and deeply. It’s a feeling he has before he even knows what feelings are.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 