What it means to become

To become is to bring together all the pieces that makes something whole. When wholeness is reached that something has become what it is.

Physical and chemical objects become when all the elements are brought together under the right forces.

Living things become with the bringing together of the ingredients (genetic) in the right conditions where they reproduce  and grow  from what they get from the environment.


Unlike other living things humans  need more to be whole than just to remain alive. A person needs air, water  food, shelter, protection from predators and a person also needs to feel that life has purpose.

To become for a person is to bring into one's life the things that will make them complete. They are material things that will give the person security and comfort, they are the things that will make the person liked and things that will make them respected.  They are things that make justice and beauty in a person's life.

To become is to be on the path to self-actualization.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

Abraham Maslow 

Abraham Maslow  was studying people who had attained the highest levels of contentment.  He was searching for a common factor in their lives, and he found it.  It was the drive to growth into the person they felt they were to be, to self-actualize.  He found that this drive to self-actualize was universal.  To self-actualize meant to fulfill ones needs.  These he organized in the order which they were most often accomplished. This is now known as The Hierarchy of Needs. There are many diagrams of this triangle or pyramid , some show a figure climbing up.  It is healthy to keep growing and wanting to do so in different areas of our lives and personalities.
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Maslows hierarchy of needs also shows all the different kinds of needs that people have.They include fulfillment in knowledge, beauty, creativity, spirituality, respect as well as the needs for food, shelter, clothes,etc.
The tree with needs has some hard to reach fruit and also some we can reach easily. The needs are our needs and also the needs of others.  Sometimes helping others get their need met gets our needs met at the same time. 

The hierarchy of needs from the bottom up is :

1. the physical need for survival  (air, water, food,  warmth, shelter)
2. The security needs - to have the physical needs into the future for selves and family, having an income, protection from criminals
3. having friends, family, being accepted,
4. having self esteem, getting respect from others, being valued
5. Having truth, beauty, creativity in ones life.

Here are two different renditions of this triangle.


There are many ways that people use the understanding of these needs.

Sales people use knowldege of the different needs to help persuade by fulfilling the different kinds of needs a customer might have.
For example a coat might  meet the need for respect and self esteem as well the basic need of worth.

Negotiators use the different needs when they give and take from the needs at different levels.  (offering a higher title and more status, perhaps).

A healthy person will try to get the needs on all the levels met.  It isn't that one need must be met before the next one is attempted.  We can fulfill higher needs as we meet our more basic ones. 
We grow in many dimensions.
When we are aware of the many different needs we have and give them value we are making it possible for us to feel that we are becoming  when we move towards meeting them.





Here are some books on Maslow and The Hierarchy of Needs: