Hi there, nice to see you again. A few days ago, I found out that all things that I liked doing were all need-driven things. I liked doing things that I really wanted to do (who doesn't?) and not the ones that I had no reason to do or the ones I was forced to do. Then, I realized that ‘want’ is a lot different from ‘necessity’. I looked up my thesaurus and it said that they were synonyms; oh, well... but still, I felt that ‘necessity’ is a word used in much stronger sense than ‘want’. For me, it sure makes a lot of difference from saying 'It is necessary for me to have a Pepsi' to 'I want a Pepsi’ (If I am wrong, let me assume that I'm right and proceed).
So, the reason I try to differentiate between these two words is that ‘want’ or ‘need’ is the mother of invention, rather than necessity (To confuse things a little more, let me say want is the necessity of invention). We invented things because we plain wanted them, not that they would be necessary; we needed them just for whim and we got it… not that we couldn’t have lived without them. My point is: That for us to be happy, we should just do the things that we need and not anything else.
Take an average Indian teenager as an example. He’s supposed to eat thrice a day, take a bath daily and do other things that he doesn’t have a reason for. Why should people be forced to do such stuff that they have no reason for? Do animals do things that they don’t need or reason? No. Hence, in a pursuit for happiness, for us human beings, all actions must be need driven; I say, be like animals - they just eat when they feel like eating and go to a nearby river for a bath when they need it. Their life is totally need-driven; hence they’re happy (refer previous post). But, the problem is that we are trying ‘not’ to be like them to become what we call as ‘higher’ creatures. Well, duh, but higher creatures are supposed to be more happy!
This brings to another problem: To get to do the things you want, you must do a lot of things that you really don’t want to. Like to just eat and sleep all day (want to) you must work real hard (don’t want to) to earn enough cash to be in a position to do that. So, what do we do? Fortunately, the answer to this question is beyond the scope of this post, and we can just keep on doing things that we want, no questions asked.
See you later,
Ravi Teja R
