Have Your Want and Need It Too

What do you want, and how can you reconcile that with what you need? You want a fifty-two inch flatscreen, but you need to pay your rent. You want to take karate lessons, but you need to buy food. You want a bigger house, but you need to pay off your student loans.

This line, this versus, this conflict between want and need, it is artificial. It is a construct, a block, a dam, and it doesn't need to even exist. In short, it's bullshit.

Our society has created a sort of emotional/spiritual/ethical vacuum. We live in a culture of want. more specifically, I want. The status quo is to acquire something, and then work on acquiring the next link in the chain. Buy your first car, then start dreaming of the day when you can afford a better one. Buy your first TV, then start eyeballing the larger model. Get your first paycheck, then start asking yourself how you can make it bigger. This vacuum we've created is voracious. Before you know it, this void has forced you to prioritize your life according to what you want (aka, what you cannot have) and what you need. What you think you need.

The other devious effect our society has is to cloud our judgement regarding what 'need' even means. Is 'need' the things that your body will die without, like food and air? Is 'need' what makes you happy, like music and sex? Is 'need' what makes you better than other people, like education and money?

Let me be perfectly clear: When I say 'our society', I'm not vilifying the government, or the mega corporations. I'm not talking about some essentially faceless pseudo entity that is easy to hate and blame. I'm talking about you. Me. Our parents, their parents, and so on. We've all fostered this ridiculous mindset.

My contention is that what we want and what we need are in fact the same thing. My assertion is that convenience-oriented living, global media, corporate media, misconception, and ignorance have conspired to confuse and mislead us.

Simplify. Take a good, hard look at the conveniences in your life. How convenient are they, really? Is your car a godsend for getting you where you need to go? Does it weigh you down or worry you with payments, insurance, the price of fuel? That food you eat from the take out place: It was really fast and tasty, but is it nourishing you in any meaningful way? Do you actually, truly want food that is loaded with chemicals and processed beyond having meaningful nutritive value? All those little 'time-saver' gadgets in your house: How many minutes do they actually save you? Is it possible that instead of helping you handle a horrible chore, they are robbing you of a valuable experience?

But there it is: We've come to perceive anything that takes a minute off our clock without giving us an emotional high as work, and we've come to revile work. Work must be shunned, avoided, dealt with ASAP so we can get on to having fun, getting high.

The highs are artificial too.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be happy, or that happiness is a dream. What I'm saying is that to balance our perception of work as torture, we've created this idea that we must pursue FUN whenever possible. FUN isn't relaxing or being happy. FUN is not fun. FUN is getting high. We feel so oppressed by work in our daily lives, whether it is our job or the things we think of as chores or tasks at home, that we go and seek an extreme opposite so we can feel balanced. We have to plan elaborate, often expensive things to do to relieve us of how we feel most of the time. And of course, the cycle of FUN is often horrible:

Step one: Anticipate. Forget what you're doing and keep your mind focused on the time when FUN will arrive. Be excited for FUN. LONG for the day when you get to have FUN. Long so much it causes physical discomfort. This step can start months before FUN does.

Step two: FUN. Go do the FUN thing. This thing is often short lived, lasting only a day, or maybe even only a couple hours.

Step three: Mourn. The FUN happened, but now it's gone and you feel empty. More than empty though, you feel somehow robbed or cheated. You wish so much that FUN had not stopped. Wish it so much that you might get discomfort similar to that which you felt during step one.

Just like a junkie. I'm not high, and man, life sucks. I'm high and life is awesome! Oh man, I'm not high any more and life sucks.

When you were a kid, did you go through a similar cycle around Christmas time? Anticipating the day, being excited out of your mind on Christmas morning, then deflating when all the presents were opened, the food was eaten, and it was life as usual again?

A similar cycle happens with money and possessions. In our society, few, if any, things are ever enough. The TV is never big enough, the computer is never fast enough, the car is never nice enough, the house is never big enough, the income is absolutely never even close to big enough. So we hop on the wheel and get running. Chase more dollars, because if you get more dollars then you can get the next thing, and THEN it will be enough, right? You just need to get a house that's a little bit bigger, and it will be enough. You just need to get a car that's a little bit newer, and it will be enough. You just need to get one more step up the ladder at work, and your income will be big enough.

But it never is, is it?

You might realize, intellectually, that your Item X does what you ask it to, what it's intended for, what you need it to do for you. But for some reason, you want a new one. Item X has lost its shine, so to speak. That, my friend, is the vacuum. That vacuum created by society has sucked the value of Item X away from you and left you wanting Item Y.

The tragedy of all this is that people don't know why they feel so bad so often. They truly believe that "If I can just get this Thing, I will be happy". Then when they have the Thing, they are not happy for long, or in a meaningful way. And like that old definition of insanity, they think that if they get the Next Thing, THEN they will be happy. It just goes on and on.

Solving this problem isn't easy, and it's deeply personal. There is no one path that will make everyone happy. However, there are some practices that can help a person find their own path.

For instance, slow down. I'm not saying you have to live like I do (though that would help make *me* happy), just try letting your foot off the gas a bit. You don't have to throw your bread machine, blender, and microwave away, but maybe you could try not using them for a week. You don't have to sell your car, but why not try not using it for a week, or at least only using it for distances of greater than 5 miles (one way)?

Another effort that's worth giving is to look very very critically at your possessions. Weigh the value they add against what they take away. A microwave adds speed, but it takes away the experience of preparing a meal. If you have a lover, when is the last time you cooked a meal with them? Computers and cell phones connect you to the world... do you ever feel leashed to them? You have a certifiable crap-o-lanche gathering dust in your garage. Do you really need an object you haven't touched in more than a year (and likely forgot you owned)?

And of course, again, simplify. Simplicity is NOT a measurement of time. That microwave is not simple; it is a highly complex device that demands special attention. It saves you time, on the surface, but it demands that you feed it (and yourself) equally unsimple food-like products. To simplify, try doing what you do with the least complicated devices you can (this will probably NOT include all of those time-saving convenience gadgets). Use your body to accomplish as much as possible (take the stairs, hand wash something, carry your baby instead of using the stroller). Eat things that grew naturally from the earth and are not genetically modified by man. Try, when thoughts of the Next Thing You Need come into your mind, to realize exactly how that Thing will really impact your life. Consider all aspects. Is what It will replace really no good? How hard will you have to work to obtain It? Will It truly free you, or will it be just another distraction to help you forget how melancholy you feel? Will It truly make you happy, or is It just another high?

It is not easy to dissect your life like this. It takes a lot of self-directed critical thinking, and it is very emotional. If you persist, you will find along the way that you sabotage yourself by making excuses for the things you do, and sometimes even lying to yourself about how you feel. But if you can persist beyond that, if you can recognize the value added to your life when you step off the hamster wheel of artificially created and mandated WANT, then something truly amazing happens: Want and Need stop looking so different.

Once you've discovered what truly makes you happy, and what truly does not, your perception shifts. The more good things you do for yourself, your body, your family; the more necessary those good things become. The more you will want those good things. The healthier you become (in mind, body, spirit; it makes no difference), the more you will want to feed that feeling of healthiness. Essentially, once you start doing Right, you start wanting Right, and you start needing Right. You may even uncover some passion that you did not realize you had, and you may find that not only do you want to pursue it, you need to pursue it, and since you've stripped away all that was wrong for you in your life, you will find that you have the time and motivation to pursue it.

As per usual, I'm pretty sure I missed half the points I wanted to make when I started this blog. I hope this one made sense.