It’s a commonplace that we’re all needy. We all need (want, desire, prefer, can’t live without) one thing or other, be it people in general, a particular person, a place, things, activity in general, a particular activity, a state of being. A lot of the things we need are… (you guessed it) Good Things. Some of them are Bad.

God, it seems, is in the business of curing need. He would like to cure us of any disproportionate need for things that are Good, and of all our need for things that are Bad. How to do it? Well… I hardly have the corner on God’s wisdom for straightening us human beings out, but it seems there are three basic options: 1) give it to us; 2) don’t give it to us; or 3) help us to want something else, something Better. Let’s call it the SSS strategy: satisfy, suppress, or switch. I’m not sure how effective satisfying and suppressing are. Do we ever get full, or do we always want more? That’s the iffy question with satisfying need. If we’re not amenable, if we’re willful, suppressing need (not getting what we want) doesn’t tend to work so well either. It can downright backfire: the thing we can’t have is the one we end up wanting most of all. The grass is always greener… So my guess is that the best tactic of all is to switch. May God help us to want what’s Better.

Switch requires being open-minded, however. Am I able to imagine anything out there that’s Better than what I think I need right now?