People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease in their clamor only when they are used sufficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and therefore are intrinsic values as well.
Abraham Maslow
(1908 - 1970)
Source: Toward a Psychology of Being, 3rd Edition, Page: 168
In my experience “capacity” is potential or power. Everyone of us has intelligence, it is not as if anyone does not. Each of us has the “Potential” or “power” to experience, to receive and to create. We can do this unconsciously or consciously. In this there is no NEED, No MUST, merely individual choice.
Wow, I have never read this before and it makes absolute sense to me. The work that I do is a persistant drive inside of me. Like I absolutely HAVE to do what I do. But I don’t feel pushed, I feel driven. And when I am doing my best work there is this calm that comes over me and I know how to make things happen that are even beyond what I was taught. It is a knowing I can’t describe. It’s like no one else fits my piece of the puzzle like I do, so it’s my spot the universe. And when I love something or someone, I HAVE to express that love or I feel stifled and unhappy. I get this quote.
We were created in love to live love, without fulfilling that need, we are incomplete.
Very well said, my experience bears this out and of course! everyone has unique capacities and also individual potentials and possibilities for perfection; and unless they are sufficiently and properly utilized, it may lead to frustration and other challenges, the question is how much freedom / liberty we have to use them by getting right opportunities … ?
My experience is not satisfactory, we need to create opportunities to use them and that is also a challenge …. !
I agree with the sentiment… live up to one's potential.
But everyone has more potential than they could ever live up to. We must choose wisely what we commit ourselves to, how we use our time and energy. Maybe this is already implied in the quote. Maslow connectss capacities with impulses. By his use of 'capacity', he must mean more than mere potential… because, by his description, if one doesn't experience a strong desire(need even), then it isn't a capacity.