Dear Stranger (22/n)
I hope this finds you while you’re in your cab on the way to an epic NYE party :)
I’ve been thinking about the words ‘want’ and ‘need’ a lot lately. My littlest pumpkin, Miss Aadhya constantly calls me while she’s on her way to school or randomly through the day and asks ‘pinni, can you come to my home?’ To which I usually reply ‘No doll, I have to work today,’ and honestly it takes A LOT of my will power to say no that sweet little convincing voice of hers. But to that she replies ‘I want you. I neeeed you.’ Needless to say, it melts my heart COMPLETELY. I don’t know if she knows the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’ but to hear those two sentences from her makes my day every time she says it.
But maybe, just maybe children understand these words better than we do.
Not grammatically — but emotionally.
As adults, we learn to ration our needs and to hide our wants. We learn to say, “I’ll manage,”even when our hearts are exhausted. Somewhere between childhood and responsibility, we were taught that needing someone makes us weak, and wanting something too much makes us greedy. So we try to be reasonable. We try to want less so that the disappointment doesn’t hurt. We try to need less so nobody sees the soft places we hide inside of us.
But then a little voice says, “I want you. I need you.”
And suddenly, those words don’t feel heavy or complicated anymore. They feel honest. They feel like home.
Because maybe wanting someone isn’t clinginess. Maybe needing someone isn’t a dependency. And maybe, it’s just the heart recognizing where it feels safest.
Some people we want in our life.
Some people we need when the world feels too big.
And the rare, precious few — we both want and need, without shame.
I hope Aadhya will always feel like she can ask for me.
When she’s 8 and her little world grows bigger and bigger.
When she’s 18 and the world feels confusing.
When she’s 28 and learning how to build a life that feels like hers.
I hope she’ll still ask, in her own way:
“Pinni, can you come home?”
And I hope by then, I would have built a life where I can answer “I’m on my way pumpkin.”