I'm quite familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the research surrounding it. "Getting laid" is not part of the pyramid for all people, nor is having a roof over one's head, “the stars are my roof”. Having a bunch of rugrats with a white picket fence is part of some folks’ pyramid. It is that certain things for me are not as important as others. If it were only about food and shelter, I would have never walked away from a very good paying IT job to become a flight instructor. I'm no Buddha or Mother Teresa, nor do I desire to be them. I do need to do more than slouch in front of the TV all day drinking beer to drown my sorrows while collecting a welfare check.
Hindsight’s argument appears to claim I want folks to work for free because one loves the job. This is false. I love my work and do not work for free. Further, I’m *really* expensive and regularly turn away those that think I should teach them to fly for free. I do not think anyone should work for free. Even volunteer work has compensation of some kind.
Next, Hindsight states that one can not enjoy nor fulfill one’s basic needs with a regional airline pilot job unless they are in the sole situation of a young twenty-something with no family. The second argument is false as I’m not a twenty-something and I’m able to fulfill both basic and advanced needs with the airline job on first year FO pay. However, I didn’t even apply to those places that treat their people like dirt, nor would require a cross-US commute. I didn’t bother thinking about airlines or anything else until I had enough passive income to meet all of my needs and they’d be able to provide a benefit beyond flight hours. Further disproving this argument, half of my new-hire class was on their second or third careers, with families.
Self-fulfillment is a journey, not an end.
With that said, I do claim that one way to know how much one loves flying, even with all of the warts of dealing with passengers, crew scheduling, delays, weather, cargo, planes that try to kill you, FAA, and NTSB (hopefully you'll never deal with them!), is to lose flying for awhile, especially if that lose is involuntary. Then you'll know.