a funny thing happened on the ride home from work today

Okay, so I was riding along, and I was thinking about resolutions again ( a guy at work had asked if I'd made any), and I was thinking about my own internal phrasing when I make resolutions, how it gets kind of whiny, like

I need to stop eating fried food (just an example, really. not that I'd ever say that to myself, nope!).

So then I went to thinking (pedaling all the the while) about Needs and Wants, and after quickly blipping onto how the internal phrasing would sound with I want to, I wondered how Needing versus Wanting affects the overall sense of a personal, even private, goal.

I'm gonna interject some Stinestory here. My own issues with Needing /Wanting are deeply complicated, but they go something like this. I had a messed up childhood wherein a lot of basic needs weren't met. I learned not to need much. I also learned not to want much. That came from feeling like wanting and needing never really got me anywhere. Through the miracle of therapy (Yay, Therapy!) wherein I learned to want, I gained a bit of insight. I'm still learning, as in today, when I thought about my own perceptions of the power of my needs/wants, the tone they take (spoken by me to me); how they work (or not) to sway my actions, behaviors, beliefs.

Also the nagging need, it sometimes feels/sounds like obligation.

I need to lose weight.

There's often a sense of some external entity-- like the need comes from without, not within. Even if the need is internal, maybe it stems back to some primal sense that needing isn't fun. That's what I'm feeling. Wanting (as scary as that can be) has a better charge to it. It feels more like freedom and possibility-- that's once you get past the scary ass bit of feeling your own desires, sensing that you do, indeed, have a self. Maybe the power's in seeing yourself wanting. In the case of bettering health and wellness, it's not indulgence that wants-- it's passion, lifeforce, qi. It's essence longing to reconnect with essence.