How Bad Do You Want It?

We absolutely cannot live without needs. Why then do we think of our dreams as wants? I didn’t think of this when I first tried to figure out what I wanted and what I needed in my life. What got me thinking of why defining what a need and what was a want in my life was a keen observation. If you have seen certain characters, successful mostly, pursue what they “want” out of life, you’d almost think they couldn’t live without achieving those goals or wants. Yet they could give up today and live a pretty “regular” existence without the universe noticing. So, led me to ask, why then do they seek, desire, and break through the ether just so they can do whatever it is they dream? 

Thinking back to economics class, which I took first as a general arts student at Notre Dame Minor Seminary School, the definition from the mid-sized green Simplified Economics book went something like “needs are essential for survival, while wants improve quality of life, but are not essential for living and staying alive”. In that thought train, air, water, and food would be a man’s primary needs. By the way, the economics book was published under the publisher name “Prof & Figures”, derived from the nicknames of the duo that wrote it. Funny enough, our economics tutor was then named “Prof & Figures” for his love of the book. 

Last week, I came across a pretty sincere video that struck me dead in my doomscroll. In the short IG Reel, a man laid out something I felt I could appreciate at a deeper level, that I had reached a similar conclusion about my own endeavours. In the video, he said, “If I abandoned this project, I would be a man without dreams. And I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project”. Appropriate First reactions could be wonder, bewilderment, or even an exclamation that went in the region of “what could this dream possibly mean to this man that the only other option was to have ended their life..” I must say, they are strong words, and not quite socially acceptable. But it would seem for a man with a dream, they are restless till the dream is realised. Without the realization of that ideal, they are half men, and would not be men at all if they fail at it, both figuratively and to the true import of not being alive/man. 

So, what’s in a dream? What it is about dreams that, aspirational (wants) as they mostly are, could assume the power of a need that would cause one to ascribe such a powerful meaning to it. I cannot pretend to know what that dream truly meant to the man. But from his own words, they meant his life. In a mathematician’s language, his life would be equal to the dream. And without the full realization of that dream, his life should have ended abruptly. Such a powerful sense of meaning can only be an extreme driving force. For the majority of men and women who are extremely successful, meaning carries weight in their affairs. 

This February, one of the books on my to re-read list is Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life. Let me borrow some wisdom from the book that brings us 12 more rules from the mountain. “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient” is a telling principle from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, urging us to choose long-term purpose and responsibility over easy, short-term gratification, even if it means sacrifice now for a better future self, confronting difficult truths, and building strength by facing life’s chaos rather than avoiding it. Meaningful action involves facing challenges and doing what aligns with your highest values, while expediency is doing what feels good now but harms your future, like indulging base desires or avoiding necessary conflict.