The Difference

Want and need.

Some people "need" a new coat or new shoes, when they have a closetful. Some need a sushi fix, or a doughnut fix, or a white chocolate mocha latte. Some people need to get out of the house every night or at least every weekend.

Some people I know need to feel loved, need to feel - something, anything at all. They'll go to Disney World or the movies or a new bar or a new restaurant, desperately looking for their fulfillment. They'll squeal when they see people whom they've seen all week as if they haven't seen them in months. They'll sit and gaggle and gossip and giggle, ooohing and ahhhing over everything, pointing out people to other people. The guys will sit and talk about the game (whichever one was on this week) or about their women or their friends. And the evenings pass in hazy recollections and giggling unremarkable incomprehensibility. But they NEED to do that every weekend.

I have friends who need to leave the quiet certainty of their homes to go to other cities and towns, to meet other people, to shop in other places. I have friends who will drive 250 miles one way just to shop somewhere. They need to get away, they need to do and go and see.

Even friends on the edge of bankruptcy need to keep their heads up and their chins up and make people think that they are just fine. They spend what little money they have left to gad out and about, pretending to others and to themselves that things are not as bad as they seem.

A long time ago I read a fictional book about terrorists blowing up the Stock Market - as well as destroying it via an internet virus. All of the information was destroyed and would have to be rebuilt from the archives - which could take months. One very smart man stood up and said, "Look, the Stock Market is purely fantasy anyway. We can put up arbitrary numbers and no one is going to check them; they won't be able to. So we'll just say that we had a minor glitch but the problem is fixed already, and we will run the tape just as if there was never any interruption." In the fictional book it worked. Somehow, knowing what I know about politics and the gullibility of the American public, I think that it would work in real life too. People would rather believe desperately that everything is fine Fine FINE than to face the truth and deal with it.

So many people, so bent on the superficality of life, bent on having everything they need, need, need, not ever stopping to reason and think and plan or at least look at what they are doing, where they are going. So many people who cannot be honest with themselves, much less others, who prate on and on about their latest purchases or their latest trips or their latest entertainment. So many people talking about what they need, what they have to have, what they are determined to have, even if their pocketbooks and their common sense dictate otherwise. So many people, demanding that their lives reflect the high drama of movie sets, desperately needing the Sturm und Drang of shrieks instead of smiles, heights of joy and depths of tragic sorrow and pain, needing the rapid slides from one to the other, needing more and more excitement and furor as their lives go slowly to hell. Having no real beliefs, no foundation, no basis for their thoughts and hopes and needs and dreams, as well as no plans or goals for themselves, they must manufacture the uproar in their lives to feel alive, important, and valuable.

Yes, it is all to easy to fool the sheeple, who have to buy the latest Shamwow or Snuggie to prove to themselves that they are on the cutting edge, that they matter, that they are important.

How pathetic they truly are, they have simply no idea.