As both a professor and a pastor, let alone someone trying to help others learn to Live Well, I often find myself dealing with someone claiming to “need” something. Usually, they need a better grade or they need my help; sometimes this comes up in a conversation about a possession desire as in “I need a new phone.”
Over the 22 years of my marriage, my wife and I have relentlessly pursued simplicity as a style of life. And let me tell you, it is not easy. Increasingly life brings demands and pressures, desires are broadcast on the TV screen or “planned obsolesce” brings force to you in terms of deciding if you really will upgrade or not.
In those moments, when someone says something involves a “need,” the question comes back challenging that idea. “Do you really need that?” One of us, my wife or I, will often say, “Well, ‘need’ is a funny word.” And by that, what we mean is that the thing is not really a need but a want. Recently our van of 10 years died on us; it was all quite inconvenient, especially since we would have preferred to try and trade it in for at least a few thousand dollars. Instead, it was now scrap metal.
From one point of view, we “needed” to get a new van. Yet, upon scrutiny, the reality was that “need is a funny word.” We didn’t NEED it. We need air to breathe and food for sustenance. We don’t need a new van. If we had to, we could take the solid public transportation here in Orlando. And, we did still have my truck, as well as my motorcycle that I was more than happy to ride.
My online friend Seth Godin touched on this issue recently in this post:
When people have their basic needs met, it’s not uncommon for wants to magically become needs. It’s our hardwired instinct to seek to fill unmet needs.
That pays off for any marketer that has persuaded his market that they need what he sells. It backfires when those ‘needs’ are seen for what they actually are–luxuries.