It’s a strange phrase, need versus want, as if there were two competing teams, and it’s a wide spread concern especially among those less well-off which is most of us.

I will ask, what do you feel is the difference between need and want?

The amount of distress caused by not having it?

Needs are not as easily ignored as wants.

Things you need keep you alive.

There are no wrong answers really.

Wants can change. Excellent. Needs also can change.

Maybe to some degree needs do as well. Basic needs of food, water, air and love don’t really change though. Basic need of food changes in the form of altered diet. Basic need of water changes based on body weight and degree of exertion. Need of air changes with air quality, increasing as air quality decreases.

Oh, but the need of needing them, does that change? You can’t ignore your need for oxygen even if you hold your breath. Well, through technology they now have a fluid that we wouldn’t call air, but humans can breathe it.

The issue of distress would seem the most concrete way of judging need versus want, no? It feels like we need it more when it’s in short supply. Ah, that is the key factor, supply. Demand is variable, but supply has shaped everything about the evolution of life as we know it. There are even organisms on this planet that don’t breath air at all. They breath methane. There is an organism, a form of bacteria in both the previous case and this one, that has managed to survive over a thousand years on almost no oxygen, yet life persisted, amazing no?

We adapt our needs. And adapt to our wants. That’s one way they appear to split from each other.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~