"What we want, what we need... all the same thing, yes?" - Prince Naveen of Maldonia

Have anyone noticed how as we grow older, there's this shift in the attention we give to the things we want and the things we need.

Take a child who starts from simply crying for the thing it wants. Babies are no exception. (They don't need to be carried all the time but some have tempers easily noted when they are NOT being carried more than they should.) Toddlers boosts level through their want of toys, candies or simply attention. This goes on until the puberty stage.

Adolescence is famous for the indecision over identity. The wants and the needs take part in this too. They want to be a number of things or think of themselves that they are these things. But naturally they understand that they can't. Because simply, they cannot support themselves in their decisions, or they cannot provides themselves the things they need. And so the battle, where ultimately they just try to say that "Life is unfair."

When a person then starts their first job, it is a matter of trying to fulfill their wants, as the after effects of their teenage years. Unfortunately for some, this also coincides with them having to strike it out into the world alone. They fight to keep their salaries 'til the end of the next working day, while fighting the itch to spend that salary on a new gadget that they had "really, really, really," wanted for so long.

The full adult, even without a family finds a recluse over the whole want and need dilemma. They now understand that needs come first. Even without a family of their own yet, they can now easily say that the things they want must move aside for the week's grocery. Although wants will diminish in time, they will of course not disappear entirely.

Happily will a person leave their needs in pursuit of the things they want but of course that will never happen (duh.) Basically, the attention to needs, and how to satisfy them simply shift from our parents who have long since made sure that we were well provided to ourselves who want to be stable in terms of survival.

The charts then rockets with needs accumulating from keeping a family happy. I'm not saying of course that marrying and having kids are wrong. That is the decision of each individual whether or not to make a family. But we should mention the besides having your own needs, there's the need of your spouse from you and the need to make your children happy, supported and in a sense satisfied.

Here mostly end the time of thinking for oneself. You now reach a phase of selflessness to provide for your loved ones. (Though this does not happen to all but theoretically speaking - if yo didn't want mouths to fill, then you would have stayed single.)

This then declines once more to the time when the kids start leaving home and learning to fend for themselves. The time you have for yourself has now increased including the want to do things again.

It's basically a roller coaster ride. There are times when you are up and other time when you are done. It does not matter to me what you decide for yourself. Simply live your life. And the pattern will materialize soon enough.....

...especially when you start contemplating ideas during a shower or bath.