9th February 2010
All that we want may not be what we need!
It's just human. We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants and needs and desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about it, we're all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies. it's like a kind of poetry.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Mister Sandman, 1994
Words may appear to give the same meaning even though there is a subtle difference between them. The word `need' is defined as `want something because it is essential'. It presupposes that the thing is necessary or very important. The word `want' is a desire to have something whether it is essential or not. We may want something without applying our mind.
Whenever someone wants something or we ourselves want something, there is an emotional attachment to that desire. We may feel very strong about it. We may have a lot of justification to support our desire. However, if only apply our judgment and impartially evaluate if the same is essential, we may decide against it.
On the other hand we may need something which is very essential and important, but we will not go for it since we may not be emotionally attached to it. We will be tempted to have something which we want and not that which we need! Given a choice we will rather choose what we want and not what we need.
For example, we may want to sleep half an hour more in the morning, but we need to go jogging; we may want to watch a television serial when we have to give that time to the work on hand; we may want to praise a person at a time when he really needs a negative feedback; we may want to buy an electronic gadget when we need that money to buy something even more essential.
A little thinking and impartial evaluation will make our decision even more relevant to the context so that we go for what we need and not what we want!
Next time when you are doing something, stop and ask: Is this something which I want to do or I need to do?
N C Sridharan
000
Posts
