Feng Shui from the Inside, Out – Day 17
Feng Shui from the Inside, Out? Day 17
By Victoria Pendragon
Recognition 2
We are born, most of us, into an attention-saturated atmosphere, some of us enter the world as if in a spotlight, with the eyes of any number of onlookers on us, and the adoration that most of us receive as newborns is never again equaled, but what a great way to start to life!
Except for hermits, almost everyone both wants and needs to be recognized, seen for who they are. In business, it’s essential if you want to succeed and in private life it’s usually both desirable and comfortable to be affirmed by others. Recognition is an aspect of attention but it carries a value that simply getting attention doesn’t.
Babies and children supposedly crave attention; I say supposedly because, in fact, babies and children both need and deserve attention. Babies and children that don’t get the attention that all small living creatures require can go to great lengths to get it…so can the adults they grow up to be. But that doesn’t usually yield the kind of recognition that is useful. Nevertheless, when young human beings are deprived of the attention they rightly deserve, the lack stays with them. If they are smart, they go about filling that void in ways that are socially acceptable and perhaps even useful but if they have been so injured by careless adults who probably never received the attention they deserved when they were children, that they cannot make sense of the world, then their ploys to attract attention can range from mildly annoying to things that may seem crazy and the recognition they get can sometimes come with jail time.
