I don’t go shopping for clothes that often, perhaps 2-3 times per year. I hadn’t been in a while so about a month ago I decided to head to the local shopping district. I was actually excited at the prospect of getting some new jeans and maybe some sweaters for the fall/winter. I first headed over to Nordstrom Rack where I spent well over an hour looking for jeans. Now I went looking for jeans because I didn’t really have very many nice pairs of jeans left in the closet. However as I began to shop, I discovered that I “needed” other things like blazers, ties, maybe a suit, even t-shirts for next summer. I found myself lost in the myriad of choices of things that I suddenly now realized that I needed. How could I have endured so long without such glaring needs?

I spent the next week and a half going to several stores in order to round out the “starting rotation” for my closet. But aside from my initial excitement it was far from enjoyable. Then I began to reflect on what I thought I needed. I found that it was very peculiar that I set out to fulfill some particular needs but as I began shopping other “needs” arose. And the question that I asked myself is what are truly needs? What are simply “nice-to-haves”? In the west we live in a culture where we are told that we need many things in order to give us happiness and satisfaction. Television, internet, magazines, billboards, and a host of other media tell us that we need this pill, or that food, or that job, or that gadget, or this service in order to finally transition from the brown grass to the green grass. If only I had that leather blazer, then I’d be set…

But then it occurred to me that our very definition of needs are screwed up. A need is something that arises out of necessity from our circumstance or situation. So for example, If I walk out outside naked in the cold my body will start to shiver giving rise to the awareness that I need some clothes. That is a real need. Or also, if I attend my friends wedding dressed in shorts and flip-flops and his family and friends stare at me in disgust, the need for dressier attire arises out of my socio-cultural circumstances. However, if I drive to the mall to pick up a pair of jeans, and see a blazer that I like, and need to come up with a reason to wear it, that is a want! How messed up have we become when we buy the marketer’s lie that we must shop to figure out what our needs are! Needs, by definition, should naturally arise. They should be apparent. Otherwise it’s not a need, just a want or a nice-to-have.

Imagine, how much time and anxiety would be save if we lived lives with a solid understanding of needs versus wants? What if we stopped wasting time trying to conjure up our needs and just allow life to dictate that naturally? What if we lived a life where we could be satisfied with what we truly need, and feel blessed when we get to have some of our nice-to-haves? The problem is that we’ve come to see nice-to-haves as needs, and in the land of endless opportunities and choice, many of us are just sadly miserable and confused.