The 'Bear' Necessities...

My name is Dov - a Hebrew male given name meaning "bear", from which the Yiddish name "Ber" was derived

Bear: "to endure (an ordeal or difficulty)"

Necessities: "the principle according to which something must be so, by virtue either of logic or of natural law."

So what are the Bear Necessities and why even consider them? I think first and foremost it is not possible to even begin discussing the Bear Necessities without mentioning Disney. It would be hard to find an english speaking individual aged 30+ who would hear those two words together and not immediately start humming the infamous song from Disneys classic, The Jungle Book.

However, one important thing to note is, that in their song, Disney chooses to use the word Bare ("Without addition, basic and simple" ~Oxford Dictionary) and not Bear as I have done above. The reason for this is not profound by any means but, if considered for a moment, it definitely does raise something so very obvious to our awareness.

Take these simple lyrics for example:

Look for the bare necessities

The simple bare necessities

Forget about your worries and your strife

I mean the bare necessities

That's why a bear can rest at ease

With just the bare necessities of life.

There is nothing overly deep in the above lyrics, but maybe it provides us with an indication of how to 'bear' some of life's necessities. W

hen one needs to endure a certain difficulty maybe the answer is to simply “Forget about your worries and your strife”.

I would venture to say that for most of us this is clearly easier said than done. Viktor Frankl (author of ‘Mans Search for Meaning’) states that in order to bear, to endure, a difficult ordeal it is imperative that we find some meaning behind that ordeal. However, not all ordeals is are a necessity.

So, going back to our initial question, how does one endure (an ordeal or difficulty)which must be so? How do we endure something that is so essential by natural law? How do we bear certain necessities?

I think that the first stage is to try to work out what they are, I can share some thoughts from my own experiences but each individual has their own journey and own experiences.

Take for example, in the year 1998, when I was 16 years old, my father left to live and work abroad in order to support the family. We stood, watching my father cry as he departed at the airport, knowing that my mother couldn’t even accompany him to see him off lest she break down and not let him leave. There we were, my younger brother and I, stunned as my father walked away at departures and not kno

wing when the next time would be that we would lay eyes on him. At that stage of our lives, affording a plane ticket for a visit was definitely out of the question.

The pain was immense, reading the letter he wrote for us saying goodbye was even more torturous, but I knew I had to endure, I had to bear the pain and persevere.

The method I chose to achieve this, was to simply ignore it, pretend it wasn’t happening, know that really once I get home he will say goodnight to me and by the morning I will wake up from this hellish dream. This went on for a while but as the days went by the pain only grew. I still refused to accept it, knowing it will be over soon however as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months I started to understand that the only way to move forward and accept this ordeal was to realize that it was a necessity. Not only was it a necessity that he had to leave, because without that we would have ended up homeless, but it was also a necessity for me to accept that I will not wake up from this dream and that it is now part of my life. So these were the two necessities that I had to bear, there was no choice, for had I not, I would have withered away like the petals of a dying rose waiting to wake up from my hellish dream.

Everyone has necessities to bear but the reason we need to consider them and give them the correct acknowledgment, is because if we do not we will end up spending our lives waiting for them to pass where instead we should be enduring them and using them to come out stronger and on top.

Needless to say, necessities can also be positive but this is not about those. Those are easy to endure, they are enjoyable and can provide a sense of satisfaction.