Needs vs. Wants

This topic was inspired by a friend of mine who asked me what is the difference versus needs and wants? I think the simple answer is needs are "must haves" in life (breathing, eating, touch of another person, water, the feeling like we are going somewhere, we are accomplishing something, we have a purpose). Wants are how we go about getting these. The example I gave was a person gets stranded on a deserted island. The person has come to love pizza to the point that it was an addiction. This person had to have pizza 3 or 4 times a week or else they would go crazy. On this island there is plenty of food. Fruit from the trees, fish in the ocean, nuts and berries throughout the island. The person who had come accustom to eating pizza will no longer have that as an option yet the need for food will not change. If the person does not eat they will die. Although it may be difficult at first to get over the want for pizza the person will survive without it. The next question that came up was do we need another person there in order to survive? This is a touchy one because the simple answer is no but above I wrote we need touch of another person. Weather it be literally or figuratively this is a necessity in order to survive. Does this mean this person is doomed if they don't get saved? The answer here is no. One of the reasons we have psychological problems as we get older is because we didn't or don't get enough positive attention from others. A child that is left alone in a crib to cry and rarely is shown any affection or love most likely will have serious problems relating to others and getting the attention they need in order to live a healthy life. This applies to our stranded person. There is a continual need for this positive attention. If this person had friends and or family support before they were stranded then the thought of making it back to this attention is enough to sustain a person and maybe even prolong their life. If this person has no support group waiting for them when they get off the island then chances are they will die relatively quickly.
There are many things that we feel we want in this life and I believe they are another way of telling us who we are and how our brain works. One could want to make a million dollars a year and yet there are starving people in third world countries that live without money at all. Some have argued they are happier. Our wants are like emotions. We don't want to hide from them. We need to use them as way of seeing what our brain is telling us and then we can look to our inner source to see if that is really what we need. Are we associating with the right people or do we want to be seen in a certain group to fulfill an image we want to portray? Are we hiding from our true self by filling it with useless wants when we would be happier if we focused on the needs and allowed our true self to shine?
By getting in touch with Flo we start to filter out the wants that are unhealthy for us. We become our true self and start to fill our life with the wants that make us happy and healthy. Our needs are always going to be there. There is an infinite way of getting them met. We need to learn which are positive wants and which are negative wants then make our choices from there.