Monday, October 7, 2019

Needs Vs Wants - Understanding It!


I still remember my childhood days where it was more about Needs than about Wants. Way back in 1947 onwards no one really cared about Wants. It was only about survival, about daily Needs and that was about it. People were content with what they had and had dreams to fulfill. However, I never heard of my parents who were from that era talking about Wants.

I guess every generation comes with certain challenges and an individual’s Wants is one challenge that we face today with the generation of millennial's. It’s no doubt it’s an individual’s personal choice of what he needs and what he wants. However, the most basic fundamental need of human race is FOOD, CLOTHING & SHELTER. Rest everything goes from Want to Greed. A spiritual person once rightly said “For a human being today, stomach empty is one problem but when stomach is full, one hundred problems”. The moment our needs are fulfilled, our wants crop up within us. After all that’s the nature of human existence to expand our boundaries. Today for some even sky is limited, hence you will see people wanting to go to the moon and mars.

I will speak about WANTS here more than NEEDS as all of us know what we need but we do not exactly know where to draw the line in terms of WANT. WANT is different for different people. For some having 100 pair of shoes could be his/her want or for some having a MERCEDES could be a want. Want is nothing but comfort & luxury. It’s the kind of lifestyle you wish to choose to live. However, it doesn’t come easy. It’s rightly said that if you want something in life, you need to sacrifice something in return. So what do we do? We work harder, sit longer hours, get paid overtime, overstress ourselves, spend less time with ourselves as well as with our family.etc.. At the end of the day what we get out of it is the satisfaction of owning what we always wanted. But, what we tend to forget is what we have lost in the bargain for that temporary satisfaction. The reason why I say temporary satisfaction is because our wants are most often related to materials and not emotions or experience.

A few may not agree with this. For some, wants may bring them a good experience as well, like going on an expensive vacation or driving your favorite car to work every day. However, at the end of the day you need to ask yourself if it was all worth it and be true to yourself. In the race to achieve our wants, we often lose out on the time we have in our hands which is the most valuable thing in our lives. We trade this for a better experience out of materials that we possess in our daily lives. It’s not bad to have wants but it’s also equally important not to get carried away with our worldly possessions and forget the real life that we are here to experience. You are the CEO of your life, how you manage it, I leave it up to you.

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