Wants and Needs

Last night the Toirdhealbheach Beucail clan sat down around our traditional Sunday night homemade pizza for dinner and movie. The movie was The Princess and the Frog by Disney.

It's a good movie (one we'll probably end up owning someday) for the story and the animation and the music (dixieland/zydeco). It's also good for the messages woven into the movie: the importance of family, of dreams and hard work (and how without hard work there are no dreams), of bravery, of the simple love of food. But one line stuck with me over the night and into this morning: We may not get what we want, but we get what we need.

It's a subtle thought, something that is not what most people like to hear. We live in an age - especially those of us living in the First World - where it often feels like our birthright to have whatever we want, in the quantity and amount that we want it. But wants can be terrible things. They can become demanding masters, desiring to filled more and more, sending us to greater and greater lengths to fulfill them. They can simply be something that is good in a small amount but terrible in larger quantities. Or they can simply destroy us.

We don't like needs. We don't like the word "needs". It's so...needy. Sounds so much like poverty, like begging for something. So bland and pathetic. But a need is simply that. A need. Something critical which we must have - perhaps not as exciting or flashy as want, but far more necessary.

To be clear, I'm not specifically addressing material things. Those are easy to determine between wants and needs, and usually done in such a way that it becomes a finger pointing exercise in charity and greed. What I am thinking of are the intangibles: relationships with friends and family, emotional needs, feelings of self validation or self worth.

So the question I have to ask myself - with everything, not just material items - is "Is this a want or a need?" The two can become confused in my mind sometimes. I just have to think things through for clarity.

Which, I might add, really is a need.