Would You Die?

I brought the kids to the mall today and faced that ever-existing dilemma whenever parents bring their children to the mall. The big one is pulling you to the music shop, or the gadget store, or begging you to buy him a new shirts, the little one is worse, she run after the toys they set loose in the store so they can hard-sell the stuff to you when you pick up your little one. Soon, you're debating with both children (yes, teenagers are just large children) that they don't need it right away, or they can't get it today, or we can't afford it yet, etc. They defend themselves that they need it.

Need--- now That's raised one of my very thick, almost conjugated eyebrows. I know that when you want something so badly, you get that feeling... a "need" to have it.

There is a confusion between what you want and what you need these days. Media has made sure you live following a set of rules of want. It has dictated what we want and turned it into a need.
We have television to blame. the cheapest form of entertainment has indeed turned it viewers into my chaepest form of entertainment--- free subjects for observation. How many ads of beautiful rosy white-skinned women with bodies to die fo have killed the true idea of beauty among women? How many men with bronzed skin and rock-tight abs have made women so sure that those were the guys to die for? How many credit card and loan ads have made us feel too inadequate we couldn't get them with merely our own earnings?

These are wants--- you've lived without them, some of our forefathers may not have had them, but we live. Media is changing them into needs.

Furthermore, it makes us feel bad. It makes us feel bad we don't have rosy white skin. It makes us feel bad we're not zero-fat. It makles us feel bad we do not have a house in the highlands. It makes us feel bad we cannot afford the latest gadget or the best car.

And it's not only consumer goods, people. Media is also the shows we watch on Television. We feel bad that we don't have a relationship. We look for romance and fail. We base our real life relationships with those characters we see in the soaps. We make believe we live the lives of these fictional heroes and anti-heroes.

Although true, we are the heroes of our own stories. Our lives can be stuff movies are made of. But people, not everybody's life consists on just one plot, one with a beginniing, a plot, a climax and a denouement. Live is a series of climaxes and catharrhses, a multitude of colors, characters and subplots. We are not one dimensional, two dimensional characters; WE ARE MULTI-FACETED, UNIQUE INDIVIDUALS, and none of us are to be tied up to an archetype.

I bring you back to the main concern of the matter; Is what we want,necessarily what we need? Are you confused with what you want?

Here is the solution:

When you want something badly that you claim that you need it, and it hurts that you don't have it, try closing your eyes. Ask this simple question: "Will I physically die, fall ill or become seriously hurt if I don't get it?"
If your answer is no... Then, that is a WANT that somehow you have believed to be a NEED. That is technically a LIE you've created for yourself.

Harsh, I know, to label what you falsely believe in as a LIE, but that is what it technically is, peeling off all its dainty tassels and its delicate trimmings. That is what it is in all its nakedness and raw appearance.
If you don't need it, you will not die if you can't have it.

Not everything you want is everything you need.