• Mood: contemplative

Wants and Needs - Some Thoughts

Yesterday I wrote about being needed and the feelings that surrounded it. One of my wonderfully astute LJ friends pointed out the difference between wants and needs. She suggested that needs can be compulsive and wants can be pleasurable. This is a more-so statement, as there are exceptions to this thought.

When I think about wants vs. needs I am reminded of the way of differentiating priorities in life. When offered a series of choices, the responsible person is supposed to choose what they need vs. what they purely want. A person needs nutrition to survive and a person wants a steak. A person needs shelter and a person wants to live in a penthouse. Needs tend to pull rank on wants. Ok... guidelines for living.

I next considered needing to be with somebody vs. wanting to be with somebody. There are some people I very much want to be with, but life is not arranged for such now. Still, it can be touching to the other person to know that preference is there. I personally don't get the same warm feeling from needing to be with somebody. I've always considered the needing to be with somebody to be creepy. There are love songs/ballads geared towards NEEDING to be with a person, and these sound like recipes for stalking to my ears. The entire "I want to spend every minute with you because you are my everything and I NEED you" type song is just plain scary to me. Where is the restraining order? However, there enough people who identify with the need thing that songs like this are still written. But that's just me...