‘NEEDS’. . .

I cannot remember when I first began to focus on the important difference between a ‘Need’ and a ‘Want’ – it seems like decades. What I have learned is that no matter how powerful the ‘want’ it will almost always be compromised when faced with a ‘need.’ The following definitions might help us see why this tends to be so.

NEED = something deemed necessary; something requisite

WANT = to wish, to crave, to demand, to desire

At times folks – myself included – have equated ‘want’ with ‘need.’ I have found that my two definitions help me discern which is truly in play in a given situation.

More recently I have been considering ‘Needs.’ My current thinking is that we have adulterated, and continue to adulterate, the concept, ‘Needs.’ One way we do this is to use my definition of ‘want’ to define ‘need.’ When we do this we treat our ‘needs’ as holy, for some, ‘needs’ become their gods, their idols. We spare no effort, no toil, in order to satisfy them. We end up worshiping not just one but a whole Mount Olympus full of ‘wants’ reframed as ‘needs.’ For some, their espoused moral and spiritual norms are actually personal ‘wishes,’ ‘cravings,’ ‘demands’ and/or ‘desires’ in disguise. We treat them as ‘something requisite’ when they are anything but.

Consider, gentle reader, that ‘need’ denotes the absence or shortage of something indispensable to the well-being a person, a relationship or a community. Given this, the term ‘need’ is used in two ways (perhaps there are more than two, as of today I am aware of these two): one focuses on the actual lack; a lack that is ‘indispensable.’ The other focuses on the ‘awareness’ of such a lack. My current thinking about ‘Needs’ focuses on the second way.

Each of us human beings nurtures a diverse garden of needs; each human garden is composed of different needs – no two gardens are the same. There might well be a minimum number of human being needs; there appears to be no maximum number for any one of us. Some of our needs are inherent in our being human; others, for example, emerge in response to our environment, to our socialization, to our time in history, and to a specific community in which we are a member. Some are induced by envy, or jealousy, or covetousness. Some are adulterations of ‘wishing,’ or ‘craving,’ or ‘demanding,’ or ‘desiring’ – we call these adulterations needs and we act as if they are needs. We can become so good at this adulteration that we become unable to discern the difference between a ‘need’ and a ‘want’ (as I have defined them earlier). It is easy for a ‘want’ to become a ‘must-abation’ and as we know, some of us by direct experience, ‘must-abation’ leads to blindness – we cannot ‘see’ the real ‘need.’

Consider, gentler reader, that more of us die as a result of pursuing our adulterated ‘needs’ than we do as a result of disease. What also seems to be true is that too often our pursuit of adulterated needs turns into aggression and is a major tap root of war (history continues to confirm this). Given all of this it seems to me that there is a benefit in understanding the difference between ‘Needs’ and ‘Wants’ and then to focus more on addressing ‘Needs.’ Pardon me, I must stop here as I need to go to the store for I have a need for some ice cream.