Wants and Needs

We all know this- "It is never a need but always a want".
From my fav U2 band - "What you don't have you don't need it now" (Excerpt from It's a Beautiful Day).

So often I have friends letting their lives lead them instead of living their lives. They get into buying more and more from the insatiable wants. And once you get tied with cars and houses, stocks, investment, you realize the $ commitments monthly will get you down and without realizing it...you lose yourself.

Many people thought it is a driving force, a motivation, a goal...I feel it is a sure quick way to losing yourself when you over-commit and you might compromise your integrity, your morals in order to get out of that choking feeling.

I guess I have been through that phase. Having a need to commit to paying for a house or a car and quite often needing to find more money. I start to lose myself and in turn perhaps become someone else... The worse thing about this, it is a disease which many have failed to realize until they lose it all - be it material gains or people they love; or when they finally completed paying for all the purchases. Then you stop to think, if it is really worth it. Would a simple life without the fear of losing your job, supporting your dependents... be better? Or simply it is the lack of money which results in that? But I realize I have friends who made more, they spend more. Frugality doesn't always go hand in hand with wealth.

Would happiness be easier achieve with simplicity? But how many of us can live with just needs and not that Gucci or LV bag or even a gold ah-beng mobile?