The sharp contrast of needs and wants that has been ignored

I went to a missionary secondary/high school and there’s this ceremony called Corpus Christi and Christ the king (the catholics would understand). They are two different ceremonies that are often times celebrated together towards the end of the year. We do that by walking round the community shouting, singing, dancing and praying; just celebrating Jesus Christ.

It was always fun until your strength vanishes and tiredness kicks in. Fatigue from tired muscles, cracked voice from screaming for joy, weak legs from walking for so long, stomach noises from hunger, and dry throat from the hot sun and brown dust.
As much as we tried to manage the situation and endure, we couldn’t ignore it forever. We were both hungry and thirsty. Food could wait but the dry air, hot sun and scorching heat made it impossible to stay without quenching our thirst. And water was the only solution. Water was what we needed.

We walked through the villages and finally, we found a store. But unfortunately the water they had was sold out, which was not surprising because the whole crowd was thirsty. Then when we looked into the cooler we saw chilled bottles of coke staring at our faces. Oh lord! We were mesmerized. ( laughs* You know how that feels) it stared at us like our savior and we couldn’t stop ourselves. We wanted it and we bought it. Everyone drank theirs, I gulped mine on one go till it was empty. We left when we were done and joined the crowd. In less than fifteen minutes, we stared at each other again. We were much more thirsty than before.

We thought coke would quench our thirst but we were just kidding ourselves. In the end nothing could truly quench out thirst like water.
Instead we spent that money on coke and nothing changed, when we should have waited patiently till we got water and quench our thirst once and for all. But we ended up wasting resources and time.
What was needed was to solve our problem permanently but instead we went for what we wanted to solve our problem immediately.

Back to real talk

There is a bold line between needs and wants. Often times we are chasing what we want without realizing what we truly need, that we wasting our precious time and money on the wrong things. Its the best thing to know what you want but its wiser to know what you need and where to place It in order avoid misplaced priorities.

A man bagged a five million deal after years of hard work and he went to buy a Car of four million which was very foolish, sorry to say. I’m sure he must have been tired of trekking to work everyday, together with the crazy traffic. But what he failed to understand is that a car is a liability not an asset. He wanted a car but what he needed was to invest and when he’s got a steady stream of income, only then can he comfortably buy a car. He was back to square one.

Someone told me sometime ago

“Chika if God just makes me a millionaire, I’ll never ask him for anything again”. I laughed so hard hearing this and replied him immediately.

“Who told you that if God makes you the wealthiest man in the world, you’ll stop asking him for anything? No way. That is when you’ll even want more from God. From more wealth comes more desires. Your requests would be endless. So stop joking”.

God doesn’t even answer such prayers. He’ll only give you what he knows you need. Not the thousand and one things you want from him. And if your wants are included in what he blesses you with then Hallelujah!

Not focusing on what is needed is like an infectious virus that spreads through every aspect of your world and threatens your potential for happiness. You can lose friendships, focus, passion and most importantly who you truly are.

If you are finding it difficult to retract your path and find out who you are and what you want and need, I wrote a blog post on that, click here and follow the guidelines stated there.

Its time to get rid of distraction and give attention to what we truly need than getting things we don’t really need.

I would love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below. You can as well email me if you want talk