Motivational Monday #55 - You Can't Always Get What You Want

Life is not often what we expect.  As the Rolling Stone so eloquently put it:

"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you just might find
You get what you need."

My life can easily be summed up by these eloquent words.  I could never have seen my life's experiences coming...and it isn't always what I would have asked for, but amazingly enough, I am making it through and will be just fine.

When we prepare for emergencies in our lives we are doing our best to guess at what life may throw at us.  We are anticipating the future and hoping we will have in place what we need.  We are boiling our wants down into needs and cutting back the fluff to reveal the solid rock.

I think one of the reasons preparation scares us is that it can be hard to accept the differences between wants and needs.  If you have ever been in a crisis, you will know needs become obvious very quickly.  For some reason our vision becomes clearer and our priorities become obvious.

In movies I can always pick out the characters who will die during the crisis.  It is the doofus who goes back for his briefcase, or the guy who only cares about himself.  It is the woman who won't take off her heals, or the one who complains about moving to higher ground.  Those who quickly identify their wants vs. needs are the ones we see at the end of the movie all dirty and exhausted, but alive and well.

In life we don't always get what we want, but if we plan ahead, and prepare the essentials, we will have what we need.