What Comes First—The Meaning or the Meal?

For anyone that knows anything about psychology, the first and most basic thing you learn is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

It starts with food, water, shelter.Then safety.Love.Self-esteem.And only then can you reach self-actualization—where purpose, creativity, spirituality, and transcendence live.

Maslow’s hierarchy has become one of those things we just accept as truth without much question. And I get it. It makes sense, if we don’t get food, water, and shelter, we will eventually die.

But… there’s also something else.

Something that lets people keep living even when they should’ve died. And the lack of something that makes people stop wanting to live…even when they technically have everything they need.

So while yes, we need food and water to physically survive, I don’t think it’s always such a clean hierarchy.

Maybe the things we call “higher needs” aren’t actually higher at all.Maybe they’re some of the most basic.

So what comes first—the meaning or the meal?

Sometimes it’s the meal. Of course. You need to live.But sometimes it’s the meaning that gives you the will to do so.So you can:

Wake up every day

Go to work

Feed yourself

Care for your family

Make money

Be motivated

Not go crazy

Not give up

Maslow’s hierarchy tells us that self-actualization is a privilege

That you can only think about purpose or spirituality after your needs are met.

But I just really don’t think this is true

Sometimes self-actualization isn’t something we earn after survival.It’s what helps us survive in the first place.

How is it that some Holocaust survivors were able to live through the unlivable, with no food, no water, no safety?Why do some people endure horrific circumstances while others, heartbreakingly, don’t?

It’s not the amount of food they had.It’s their ability to find purpose.To find meaning.To connect to something or someone.To hold on to their why.

And on the flip side:

Why do people with food, water, and safety still not want to live?

We see it every day. We are living through a mental health crisis.Rates of suicide and depression are skyrocketing—and it’s not because we lack food, water, or shelter.We have an abundance of those things.

And we keep chasing more and more of them because those are the things we believe are our only “needs.“But maybe the most basic thing we’re actually missing is…Meaning.Spirituality.Our why for how we’re living.

We see people in full comfort, feeling empty.People who refuse to eat, even when they have access to everything.People with no will to connect, no drive to show up.

So how can we say food and shelter are “basic,” and self-actualization is not?

It reminds me of Yom Kippur, which shows this idea on a much smaller scale.One of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar.

You fast with No food, No water, No physical comforts.And yet, it’s a day of complete spiritual immersion.We strip the body to nourish the soul.

And when your basic needs are taken away, you’re left with different questions:Why am I here?What kind of person do I want to be?What actually matters?

I just feel like we’re missing something when we treat self-actualization, spirituality, purpose like it sits at the top of a pyramid as if it’s some luxury or bonus because its not.

It’s not just a reward we unlock after we meet our basic needs.It’s the very thing that allows us to meet them.

I don’t think it’s a hierarchy at all, It’s a cycle where everything feeds each other.

Because Holocaust survivors weren’t living with basic needs.Torture victims aren’t living with basic needs.And people who are living with their basic needs—who have all the food, water, and safety they could ever need…some of them still want to die.

Sometimes it’s not about the meal, It’s about the why that gets you to the table in the first place.

Because “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."— Nietzsche