Need versus Want

The 'why' of desire

We tend to use the terms ‘want’ and ‘need’ interchangeably, assuming they mean the same thing. They don’t. They both generally refer to things we desire but they have different, often conflicting drivers.

What you want and what you need comes from a completely different source and place. Your desire for the things you want is driven by completely different motivations and self-positioning than the desire for the things you need.

Background

I was once talking with my cousin about relationships; about how you feel relieved when you are in a romantic relationship, as the burden and anxiety of searching for a compatible partner are lifted.

But then, he said that some lean back in complacency and don’t really appreciate the relationship. The relationship becomes a sure thing, something overly available, and thus, with little value.

I thought a bit and I came to a realisation. I said that the people who felt complacent with their relationships never wanted a relationship; they needed it, which is why they were not appreciative of it.

Needing something makes it an annoying dependency that we feel burdened to meet, otherwise we’re miserable. No wonder we don’t feel joy and appreciation even when we get what we need. However, when you can be happy without something, you are free from needing it, and you’re able to just want it.

Want is way more powerful than need. Need is desperate, entitled, and unappreciative. Want is aloof, humble, and grateful.

Do you need it or do you want it?

Before I break down need and want, it’s useful to challenge the “happy-unhappy” false dichotomy. In addition to happiness and unhappiness, there is also contentment: a sense of neutral satisfaction, a meeting of needs, but no ecstatic joy that is unstainable anyway. Arguably, aiming for contentment rather than happiness is a wiser strategy in life; happiness comes with fear of loss, and this fear makes us needy, and addicted, if you will.

Want

‘Wanting’ is desiring without desperation. It comes from a place of contentment. What you want can bring you over-and-above added gratification to your already content existence. If you don’t get what you want, you remain content, as you were before you started wanting it. If you can’t get what you want, you don’t feel a sense of loss because you can do without it. You are not reliant on the things you want.

Want is like a comfortable car. You don’t need it, but it’s nice to have. You can live without it, and it wouldn’t affect your state of mind if you couldn’t get it. Your existence does not depend on it.

Need

‘Needing’ is desiring out of desperation. It comes from a place of unhappiness. What you need cannot bring you joy, but rather, contentment at best. If you don’t get what you need, you remain unhappy. If you can’t get what you need, you feel a sense of loss, because you can’t do without it. You are reliant on the things you need.

Need is like air, food, or basic biological necessities; your life depends on it. You can’t live without the things you need, and not getting them makes your existence a tormenting one.

We all have things we need, so we either find ways to satisfy those needs efficiently and predictably, or we achieve a state of mind that has as few needs as possible. When we satisfy needs, we achieve contentment. After contentment, we only have wants.

Zen

Arguably, you can also need something from a place of ecstatic happiness; from the fear of losing happiness. Happiness is addictive and reliant upon the things that sustain it. If you become too accustomed to happiness, then the things you wanted - the things that made you happy - become things you absolutely need. You become reliant on happiness, and so, when the effect of the things that made you happy wears off, you drop to unhappiness - not contentment.

So, happiness and unhappiness are two sides of the same coin. When you are happy, you fear loss, and you catch yourself wondering how free you’d feel if you had nothing. When you are unhappy, you fear nothing, but you also catch yourself wondering what it would feel like to have something to lose. Happiness and unhappiness are the ying and the yang, a cruel dance of highs followed by inevitable lows, and vice versa; on and on the bipolar pendulum of mania and depression.

And then we have contentment. Contentment balances happiness and unhappiness. You are satisfied with who and what you are. You are still vulnerable to falling into happiness or unhappiness at any moment, but you don’t fear this; if you become happy or unhappy, you’ll aim for contentment whatever the case.

The main difference between need and want

When you feel that you need something, you become possessive of and entitled to it. You feel entitled to needs because not having them met feels like an attack on you, an infliction; it causes you pain. If you are to achieve a neutral contentment - an emotional state of neither happiness nor unhappiness - you need to have your needs met. Anything less feels like you’ve had something stolen from you. And it makes sense: we are thrown into this existence with biological and psychological needs, and we are left to the mercy of chance to satisfy them. We never chose our nature, our instinctive needs, or our random circumstances. We are hopeless newborns desperately crying for warmth and sustenance. If we are deprived of it, we are being treated unfairly, even if this mistreatment comes by random unconscious nature itself.

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When you need something, it means you can’t live without it. Yes, you may be able to physically survive without it, but you can’t live in peace with yourself, and your existence becomes suffering. The only thing giving you strength is the hope that maybe one day you’ll get what you need, and maybe then start living. So, you consider what you need a basic feature of life, not an over-and-above benefit. You don’t feel grateful for it; it feels like it was your given right all along. How could you then appreciate it? And would you be wrong to feel this way? If you were falsely imprisoned for decades, and then let go, would you feel grateful after the initial short-lived ecstasy of sudden freedom? You wouldn’t because freedom is the default.

Your needs are your preconditions for just surviving, and even though they are more important to you than the non-essential perks of life, you can’t appreciate the basics. Air, water, and temperature are the most important things for any organism, yet no one truly feels gratitude for having them in such abundance. A car’s basic function is to take you from point A to point B in a relatively short time. Yet no one appreciates an old rusty car that can perform this basic function. We all appreciate the cool Lexus with sexy lines and needless features that a worth less than they cost.

We don’t value what we need because we are so desperate for it that we feel entitled to it. We value what we want because we can do without it, yet we choose it regardless. This makes it more meaningful to have it, and we therefore appreciate it. We can only be grateful if we are not entitled to something, and if we can do without it. Satisfying needs leads us to contentment. Satisfying wants leads us to joy.

People are willing to pay more for what they want than for what they need.

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Which brings me to humility. Want is humble because it assumes no by-default ownership. You understand that you are not entitled to what you want simply by wanting it. You then understand that, if you want it, you have to work for it, put in the effort to earn it, and then therefore deserve it. This is more gratifying and meaningful to you. This makes you appreciate it more since you never felt you were automatically owed it.

Need, on the other hand, is not humble. When you need something, you feel like it’s owed to you, like air when you are deprived of it. You reach for it and take it without thinking whether you deserve it or not. There is no humility in need; you need air, so you’ll take it because you feel entitled to it. And when you get what you need, you can’t appreciate it.

Met needs don’t bring you joy; they are just the nullification of pain. Satisfied wants bring joy; they are an over-and-above benefit.

How do you know if what you desire is a need or a want?

Does the possibility of not getting what you desire make you sad? Then that’s a need. Does the same possibility disappoint you a bit, but you’re then able to shrug it off and get over it because you’re already content in life? Then that’s a want.

My unsolicited advice

Turn your needs into wants with humility, rather than entitlement. If you humble yourself enough to realise that life doesn’t owe you anything, you’ll be able to appreciate the small things in life. You’ll be happy (or content) with less.

I know this goes against the mainstream toxic positivity of “reach for the stars” or the toxic motivators’ vain deluded entitlement of “you deserve it all”. But these assertions cause more pain than anything because they teach you to be unhappy with anything other than absolute perfection. And perfection never comes, even if you achieve everything achievable for you. There will always be things unachievable, and if you need them more than you want them, you’ll suffer every second you don’t have them.

Need is desperate, so it may feel like stronger motivation in the short term; but it is not sustainable. If you get what you need, then you can begin to learn to only want it. This means that you won’t be unhappy if and when you lose it; you’ll just be content.

Need is an inner threat: “You either satisfy your desire or suffer.” A threat creates a desperate urgency to avoid pain, so it may drive you harder (in the short-term) to get what you desire than if you just wanted it. But this is a meaningless and unsustainable drive because it has nothing to do with higher ideals like identity, morality, or principles.

What you need is just for pain avoidance. What you want is the achievement of an ideal.

Stop needing.

Indeed, there is no shortage of things you physically and biologically need to survive. Some needs are non-negotiable, and you have no choice in the matter. But there are many other things we assume we have no choice but to need, yet they are well within our power to control; to choose whether we need them or just want them (or not desire them at all).

In many cases, needing something is a matter of choice based on our individual mental parameters, and the Herculean effort it requires for us to stop needing it. Indeed, you never chose the parameters that make you you, but being aware of them at the very least may grant you the only measure of free will that you could ever have. Being aware of your needs, and the cost of needing may give you enough insight to bring need into contentment, and perhaps contentment into want.

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The best way to enjoy something is to be able to live without it. If you desperately need it, you will be desperate to get it, which means that you will be willing to make moral and intellectual concessions to get it. A Mephistopheles is sure to find you, offering a Faustian bargain that you will live to regret.

The whole moral and end realisation of the 2000 comedy ‘Bedazzled’ is that you need to stop needing. The protagonist is finally at peace, not when he gets what he desperately needs, but when he stops needing it. Only when he’d got over his obsessive need for something was he ready, able, and worthy of getting something else, even better; something he didn’t need, but something he grew to want.

Of course, ‘not needing’ something is no guarantee of getting it, but at least you stand a better chance at getting it, and also appreciating more (since you’ll see it as an over-and-above benefit rather than a forced fulfillment of a painful need).

Remember, want starts from contentment. You achieve contentment as soon as you get rid of need.

Motivation

Granted, if your need is your only motivation, then by all means do whatever works for you. Just manage your obsessions; if you work towards something motivated by need alone, you’re likely to get obsessed and lose sight of what is truly important to you, and what is aligned with your values and principles.

Motivation from a place of desperate need might often be stronger in the short term, but it won’t last. As you grow closer to getting what you need, you’ll find that it doesn’t bring you joy; only pain avoidance.

You must then reflect and reassess to switch your source of motivation from need to want. Be self-reliant enough to be able to live without it, even though you are grateful to have it. You’ll then appreciate it more because you won’t feel like it was owed to you; as would have been the case with need. We appreciate things only when we see them as an over-and-above benefit that was not owed to us but we worked to earn it regardless. We don’t appreciate what we felt had already been ours by default (need), and therefore getting it feels like retrieving something that was stolen from us - a return to mere normalcy.

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Humility

If you manage to turn as many of your needs into wants, you’ll be more appreciative of your life. This means that even the most basic things you get - like sunshine in the morning - feel like an over-and-above benefit instead of merely fulfilling a basic specification of life.

You turn needs into wants by appreciating that life, people or even your god don’t owe you anything at all. Be humble in this realisation without compromising your self-esteem; be humble, not humiliated. Respect yourself for being true to your principles, but avoid loving yourself. Self-love is masturbatory vanity. Self-esteem, on the other hand, is humble unwavering groundedness.

It takes self-esteem to be humble. It takes self-love to be vain.

Summing it all up

When you need, you become desperate and violent to get what you need, simply because you are not self-sufficient without it. Your needy desperation, though, may well be the main factor that makes it unlikely to get what you desire. Neediness makes you unreasonable, reckless, emotional, and unattractive.

On the other hand, when you only want something, you are cool about it, because you are OK even if you don’t get it. You don’t desperately seek it, which means you are more likely to think coolly and logically about how to get it, instead of emotionally. And if you think rationally, you are logical more than emotional, and thus closer to meaningful success. Also, when you don’t appear desperate to get what you want, and instead appear fine even if you don’t get what you desire, people respect you for your self-reliance. They are therefore more likely to voluntarily give you what you ask or help you get what you want.

The bottom line

Separate need from want to get what you truly desire.

When you desperately need something, there is no meaning or value in having it. Having it feels like pain avoidance, and the reluctant indignant fulfillment of an imperative.

Conversely, when you just want something, it means you can live without it, so choosing to earn it regardless carries value and meaning.

This is true with relationships as well. If you cannot live without a relationship with someone, then your relationship carries little meaning or value, since you have no choice but to be with them. You have no options, so maintaining that relationship is just a passive acceptance of having no agency in the matter. Instead, if you can live without that relationship, and still choose it, then it carries true meaning.

If you are willing to sever any relationship at any given time when there is a fundamental misalignment of principles, then those relationships you still choose to have are meaningful, and therefore, valuable. If you can be fine without those relationships, yet still choose to maintain them, then this means they have proven to be worthy.

Choosing to want a relationship that you don’t need makes that relationship all the more meaningful and true.

Need is involuntary. Want is voluntary. Need is meaningless, like a disgusting biological function that our nature burdens us with. Want is meaningful, like higher ideals that no one forces on us, yet we still freely choose to pursue, regardless.

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