The Collision Between Want & Need

“Your feet will bring you to where your heart is.”

Irish Proverb

I'm staying put. Yes, after floating my dilemma your way, I've decided. I will not fly to Buffalo this weekend for Husband's cousin's wedding.

Here's the thing though: I still want to go to Buffalo. So much so that it's torturing me a bit that I'm not going.

But here's the other thing: I need to stay. My instinct, my overwhelming instinct, is to remain here at home with my three creatures.

I think I'd forgotten about the profound collision between want and need. How there are things we desire that butt up against things we instinctively need.

As a mother, I feel this collision all the time. This battle between desire and duty, between self and other, between soul and should. But it's not this simple, is it? As a person, as a mother, desire so often is the same thing as duty, self becomes other and other, self. In this place, this place beyond childhood, soul is laced with (debilitating and divine) shoulds.

And so. I don't just want to go to Buffalo. I also want to stay. I need to stay. Yes, want and need don't always combat each other after all.

Thank you for allowing me to wade through this dilemma, to muck through the confusion that grips me even now. I don't pretend to see clearly these days. Things are beautiful and blurry and I'm doing (and deciding) the best I can.

Whatever that means.

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In life, do you often feel the collision between want and need? Do you agree that it is hard sometimes to distinguish one from the other? Do you think I've made the wrong decision? (Is there such thing as a wrong decision here?)