The Needs of Our Wants

I went to the grocery store yesterday and bought vegetables, meat, spices, oil, and rice, and we'll have ourselves a nice Sunday dinner tomorrow night. I’d like to propose that there is a lesson here.

Everything you want, requires what it needs.

Every  recipe you wish to make requires the proper ingredients. Additionally it requires time, labor and tools, and some basic knowledge and skills. Similarly, everything you wish to create or accomplish also has required ‘ingredients’ in order to make it happen. You can’t make it without the ingredients, no matter how badly you want it.

You can't get a degree without going to school, get a license without passing a test, or run a marathon without training yourself for it. Every want has a need that must be fulfilled. In the case of a recipe, it is the ingredients. For health it is nutrition, exercise, time, and some basic knowledge and skills that are needed in order to be successful.

This principle is universally applicable. Give any example of a want, and you can prove to yourself that every desired want has a need. I write this as something seemingly obvious because we might forget it. Take the almost universal desire to be wealthy for example. We want that outcome, but do we want its requirements? We may want to be healthy, wealthy, wise, and have strong relationships, etc. We have our wants, but all our wants have their needs.

If we want to live, we need to eat, drink water, and protect ourselves from harmful elements. If we want to be happy we need to look for the good in life, show gratitude, and help others, then we will certainly be more happy than if we didn’t. Of course, in any recipe there are additional ingredients that can make it taste better, or turn out better, but the point is, there are required ingredients to create the essence of every outcome we want.

This is a powerful thing to understand. You reap what you sow, and for everything you want to reap, you better sow the right seeds and nurture them carefully in order to bring forth the fruit you are looking for.

It is the principle of cause and effect. For every effect or outcome you see in the world, there were things that caused it to occur. And for every outcome you wish to create in your own life, there are actions that must be taken to cause it to occur.

We choose what we do. Everything we are doing is our choice, and the choices we are making are giving us the results we are getting in our lives, right now. This is so powerful it cannot be overstated.

Now some people may wonder if this principle of cause and effect is really applicable to them, when they have been doing all the right things, but haven’t gotten the results they were looking for. This can be partly explained by two factors: intervening variables, and the principle of critical mass.

Intervening Variables

First, intervening variables affect every outcome that occurs whether we have done the right things or not. This can be likened unto the law of physics, “An object in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force,” or in this case “An outcome will occur when you do the actions that create it, unless affected by an intervening variable.”

This ranges from the friction of the air that slows a ball down when you throw it, or the brakes that slow a moving car, or the wear and tear on a car engine over the years. We live in a world of entropy, where things fall apart, and often don’t go according to plan because of influences beyond our control.

During 2020-2022 "COVID ruins everything," was often heard, from my own mouth.

It is like we live in the “Survival Mode” of the Minecraft universe. In that game, you can work to build a beautiful house, only to have it destroyed by an exploding creeper the next minute. It is common knowledge that almost every construction project in real life has delays and errors, and of course there are natural disasters, and a million other potential intervening variables that interrupt our lives.

Although you may follow all the right steps or ‘ingredients’ to build a house, things could still happen that would prevent it from being finished, or even destroy it when it’s done. Sorry, that's just life.

Kind vs Wicked learning environments

In his book, Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein describes "Kind" versus "Wicked" learning environments, speaking of the reality that life is a lot more complicated than a game of golf or chess. Spaces where there are clear and predictable rules and a few intervening variables are considered kind learning environments. To get better all you have to do is learn and practice the rules of the game over time.

However, in 'Wicked' learning environments, the rules are unpredictable and often changing. This, he says is what generalists and interdisciplinary professionals do better in the complex realities of the modern world than savants and hyper-specialists. Real life is a wicked learning environment.

Persistence and Determination

But there is at least one solution to this wicked environment which comes to mind, as described in the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling:

“If you can see the works you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build them up again with worn-out tools… yours is the earth and everything that’s in it. What’s more, you’ll be a man, my son.”

This attribute of dogged resilience, despite failures and obstacles, seems to be at least part of an antidote to life’s chaos, and our own shortcomings.

I once made an effort to build a marketing business, but my partners didn’t do their work, and I didn’t keep up with my own. Despite the best of intentions to carry it out, my own lack of work ethic and leadership ability became an intervening variable, and eventually we were let go from our client. She said “We just need a faster pace than you are able to provide right now.” It was a hard pill to swallow, both my own shortcomings, and the inconsistency of my partners, but it shouldn’t prevent me from trying again.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.” And if we keep trying at something, we are bound to succeed eventually. The only thing preventing us from succeeding is not trying again. By basic logic, what you consistently move towards, you will eventually reach.

True, there are times when we may not ultimately be able to succeed at a certain goal, due to influences totally outside of our control like age, natural disasters, or permanent disability, but we can accept all realities and do what we can do with what we have.

It does no good to complain about what we can’t do, when we ought to be doing what we can with what we have.

Critical Mass

The other element that we must consider in creating the results we want in life is the principle of critical mass. Critical mass is a scientific principle that says that there is a certain threshold of action that must be met before an outcome will result from it.

For example, I know it is usually helpful to drink water when I have a headache, but I notice that drinking only a sip of water won’t help. I must drink a whole glass of water before I start feeling better. That is the critical mass. And two glasses of water would probably help even more.

When we are exposed to a sick person, we are less likely to get sick if we only contact them in passing compared to sitting in a small room with them for a whole day while they cough all over us. Depending on how strong your immune system is and other factors, there is a critical mass of germs required to make you sick. There is a critical mass of time, and proximity that tip the scales and cause that outcome to occur.

That is the principle of critical mass, and it is worth remembering if we want to create any outcome in life. It’s not just about doing the right things. It’s about doing enough of the right things, for long enough, while acknowledging the entropic and chaotic reality that we live in, our own imperfections and other intervening variables that may still affect the outcomes along the way, and in the end. As we persist in our goals, we will most likely eventually reach them.

If someone is seeking a specific blessing, it’s easy to say “If you pray and read your scriptures, you will get answers to your prayers.” Although that may happen, there are other factors that must be taken into account, such as their own readiness, the needs of people around them, God’s wisdom and timing, other factors known only to Heaven.

In this fallen and imperfect world it is good to remember that the principle of cause and effect is still in force. There are actions required for every outcome we wish to achieve. There are needs for every want that we have. But there is also a need to reach a critical mass of time, effort, and etc, before we will start to see results, and even still there may be intervening variables.

But don’t yield to the temptation to give up responsibility for your life, saying you have no control. As always, the truth is nuanced and more complicated. Nobody is coming to rescue you from your own choices. Everything we do is our choice. AND there are things that happen to us, that do affect the outcomes of our choices.

Our job is to make the right choices, that if we persist in them, we will create the most desirable outcomes for ourselves and others, and also acknowledge that some of the ultimate outcomes are completely out of our hands.

P.S. Have a Little Faith

A quick note about faith. Faith has the power to bring realities into being that wouldn’t have existed without it. Faith is like a secret sauce that you can add to the recipe to make an outcome more wonderful than you could have hoped for without it. The same may be said of courage, hope, charity, hard work, or other virtues. But faith in God particularly is a powerful creative force to literally bring about a different reality than would have occurred without  it.

Someone may be on their way to death, and then the prayers and love of the faithful intervene, pleading in their behalf, and they make a miraculous recovery. Or someone may have just died, and then be commanded by the power of the priesthood to come back to life, and their spirit will return to their body. But they may not return to life. That is the hard thing about faith.

It’s an uncertainty, not knowing the will of God, but imploring for His help to create a desirable outcome, and accepting his will if the outcomes aren’t as we would hope. And if we are blessed with a miracle, we know it is because of our faith in God, and wouldn’t have occurred without it.

Again, our job is to do all we can to create good outcomes, while acknowledging that ultimately the outcomes are not totally within our control. We can choose what we do, and we can also respond positively to whatever happens to us. And sometimes with a little faith, we can participate in miracles. So have a little faith.

Photo by Gustavo Fring: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-in-a-supermarket-shopping-3985055/