Needs suck

I just had a thought, watching a commercial that had a woman loving her chocolate. For me, chocolate is hardly something I desire. It's perverted to a need that I actually enjoy less than people who love this succulent treat. When you need something you used to just enjoy, doesn't it become like a drug? You want a treat, but you need a drug. It has control over you in a way that's robbed of true enjoyment and satisfaction.

I used to think that needs were much more valid than wants, so that if I declared I needed something I would have a better chance of getting it than if I said I just wanted it (direct reference to a bad relationship over a decade ago where my needs were "reduced" to wants and therefore not granted). But now it seems to me that needs suck. "I need to be successful." Says who? "I need chocolate." Then it's measley vice. "I need everyone to leave me alone." That's not going to happen. "I need to lose 10 pounds." To make who happy?

I'm thinking that there's an uptight, rigid, reactionary nature to "needing" something (outside from the basics of nourishment, shelter, love, safety). It's a reaction of not having control over whatever personal situation denies us what we long for. And maybe we distort what it is we long for precisely because we get so worked up about what we don't have! We get neurotic and desperate, this desperation becoming a daily routine of anxiety and self-medication.

Wouldn't it be so much more freeing to simply realize what we want, and then do it, and enjoy the process and the outcome of it and be happy? To approach our desires in life with compassion and ease. And in the meantime, think about what it is we actually do want that will make us happy, peaceful and excited about living the life that is our own.