From the moment we’re born we cry. We cry and it gets us what we want. We learn early on that any attention we require or any need we have, can be met by behaving in a manner that satisfies our most basic desires (see Kanye West).

With time we grow up and – spoiler alert – lose our cuteness and realize that people aren’t as eager to hand us things with tantrums; unless you’ve been on My Super Sweet 16 or Bridezillas, in which case you probably still employ these tactics. For the rest of us, complaints won’t work as well as they once did, and then the task of modifying our behavior in order to get what we need starts to change. We learn to use our physical features, personal character traits, and available resources in order to barter for the fulfillment we need. But we never really changed very much from that little baby we were, deep down, we’ve always just wanted to be feeded and needed.

How important it is to be needed. I don’t mean that someone tells you they need you, or calls you always asking for favors, but to be needed the way high school girls need vampires. To know that your existence is pivotal in someone else’s life.

I think about the elderly and the physically disabled and how difficult it must be to struggle not so much with feelings of inadequacy, or thoughts about being different, as much as living in a society that doesn’t often consider them useful and needed.

Freud said in his book, Civilization and its Discontents, that the purpose of life fell in line with his “Pleasure Principle.” That is, we seek pleasure and avoid pain. I believe in our desperate search for that hard to attain “pleasure” we do some pretty crazy things.

There are so many things that we fill our daily lives with in order to feel valuable. Plunging head first into careers hoping that our organizations will validate us. Telling ourselves that our daily excel reports are important, that our legal briefs are significant, and that our widgets, units, graphic designs and blogs provide value to humanity. We want people to need us. Why?

I believe our happiness is derived from a sense we’re fulfilling a purpose. Not the temporary joy that comes from getting a new iPhone, nor the fleeting satisfaction of receiving a company watch, nor the ephemeral ecstasy of brushing up on a hottie in a club. We’re in search of a joy that isn’t easily erased like an episode of House that you meant to get to but you accidentally erased because you got confused with the stinking DVR while actually trying to erase the pilot episode of Flash Forward which for some reason was still in there way after you realized that it would NEVER be as good as LOST. I digress. The kind of satisfaction I’m referring to is not the kind that fluctuates from a meteoric high on a good day and abysmal lows on bad days. It’s the kind that is calm and steady.

I think we seek purpose for our lives and we wish for purpose from our relationships. Celebrities and captains of industry give their lives to their duties, turn over their identities to their public or shareholders, and commit their souls to their function. And before you know it they’re cheating on their Swedish-model wives and going through more hoo-hah’s than Pacino in Scent of a Woman. I look at the executives in the office where I work. So many hours spent at work. So many days spent worrying about deadlines and paperwork. So many years given to the vacant promise of appreciated work.

I’m not here to criticize their actions, I try to live and let live; but I do question whether life purpose is ever found in personal achievement. I suppose what I’m getting at is that if we all want a life purpose to meet that intrinsic feeling of being needed, and true purpose isn’t about self, then our purpose is really all about building up another person.

Maybe that’s what we’ve been crying about all along.