What do we need from a need?

Maybe the root of all need is the imagination? How else does an orchestra or a roller coaster or a four-minute mile or a five-course meal become an actual thing?

How else does hope persist? If we can imagine breathing when we are stressed out or overrun with anxiety, we will breathe. If we can imagine how we’ll find food or water when consumed by thirst and hunger, we can manufacture our way into survival.

The need is a problem to be solved, and the imagination is the path to existence. That path will surely take some twists and turns and the solution to our need will certainly look a great deal different from our original vision, but if we approach all needs from the imagination first, we can carve a path that allows us to meet that need.

And if we can accomplish the difficult task of survival, our needs will continue to morph and grow and we will be able to develop our needs, cultivate them, stay on the path we have imagined, and meet any need that arises.

But how do we qualify needs? How do we prioritize when our needs begin to exceed our capacity for imagining? When we can conquer any need, when we can generate any need, and when forces outside of ourselves can generate needs within us, how can we determine if the need truly exists?

What do we need from a need?

Maybe proximity? The closer we are to the actual need, the closer to need is to our continued survival, the more essential that need is to our next breath, the more the need looks like a tool that may be wielded to solve for the need and generate some sensation, the more we can trust that need.

If the need is intangible, if the solution to the need cannot satisfy, if the solution is never enough if the only solution to the need is more, if we can't wrap our arms around the need and its solution and experience the resolution and hear and see and smell and touch and taste it, then maybe we need to question that need. Or at the very least, continue to search for the root of that need.

We must interrogate our needs to know them thoroughly so we are able to imagine enough.

And if we can nurture the connection between our needs and the imagination, we can maintain a healthy relationship with enough.