The Desire to Be Important

While many people gain power through aggression, others attain it through observation and knowledge of what others want. By meeting other people’s desire of feeling important, many people gain power, influence people, and manage to achieve the thing that they want. However, not everyone knows what people around them want. It is one kind of power that those who are selfish will never get since they can only force other people to do the things they want. Women, men and children who know how to take advantages of other people’s wishes attain their own goals.

Throughout the history, women have been fighting for their rights, but not all succeed. Judy Brady explores the subject of making other people feel important to get what you want in the personal essay Why I Want A Wife. As a wife and as a mother in the 1900s, she understands women’s frustration when society expects wives to do everything. She describes the societal expectations of wives ironically, rather than having a blaming town towards society. She remarks, “I want a wife who will work and send me to school. And while I am going to school, I want a wife to take care of my children. … I want a wife who will not bother me with rambling complaints about a wife’s duties. But I want a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course studies. ... My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?” (Brady). Judy understands the undue stress the wives suffer when they have to face all the problems at work and at home alone. She lists everything that husbands demand on wives with the purpose of letting the husbands know how much they have always wanted from a wife and shows her sympathy to all the wives. She made wives feel that they are important and made husbands acknowledge the importance of the wives.

In the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs, under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, admits that she does everything that her master asks her to without having her master to force her. She recalls “My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years would permit. I would sit by her side for hours, sewing diligently, with a heart as free from care as that of any free-bron white child” (Jacobs 10). Harriets’ mistress acknowledges the fact that no one wants to be treated poorly. She knows that every slave aspires to be treated well. Therefore, when she treats Harriet Jacobs nicely, she gets what she wants, a person who will do everything for her before she even have to ask.

According to Dale Carnegie, all successful men who have power and social standpoint in the world all share a secret of having the desire for a feeling of importance and making other people feel important. In the book How To Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie states, “It was this desire for a feeling of importance that inspired Dickens to write his immortal novels. This desire inspired Sir Christopher Wren to design his symphonies in stone. This desire made Rockefeller amass millions that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest family in your town build a house far too large for its requirements. This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles, drive the latest cars, and talk about your brilliant children.” (Carnegie 19). The desire to be important encourages individuals to do great things in the field that they want to be noticed for and to become a better person in their own unique way. The desire to feel important motivates people to create new societal advances that will help them gain recognition. Authors always longing to write excellent books that fit the readers taste with their own tone and creativity to make them different from the all the other authors out there. Singers, as well as actors, drive themselves to attend all kinds of training sessions to improve the skills that they already have, practice new and distinct ways to perform to reach out to their audience. Successful entrepreneurs learn about their intended customers and that is how they manage to get all the sales done. They know what their customers like and need. They know their customers’ tastes and especially, they know how to make their customers feel special by giving them small gifts, wish them a happy birthday and provide them good customer service. People will not get what they want if they are selfish and only think and talk about themselves. Become genuinely interested in other people and make them feel important is one key thing to success.

Moreover, a well-known African American writer, Sherman Alexie states in his personal essay Superman and Me that “We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. … As Indian children, we were expected to fail in non-Indian world. Those who failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians.” (Alexie). He intends to make all the African Americans feel important so he encourage them to study hard and read a lot. He makes African Americans to feel ashamed about how other people underestimated them. He emphasizes that Indians can be successful, encourage them and make them feel important. He knows that everyone wants to be smart, successful and can achieve everything that they want. By doing that, he gains power and achieve his goal of making impacts on African Americans life.

Moreover, McMurphy, a fictional character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, stands up for the other patients because he knows that they do not want to follow Nurse Ratched. The patients