Want vs Need

Lately, we've been trying to get our daughter, Emmaleigh, to understand the difference between "want" and "need". Today, we were goofing around with an idea of spending a day or a week or a month with only what we "need". Debbie, Emmaleigh and I debated whether we should include books... on one hand we want them for entertainment, but on the other hand we need them so we can learn and grow. Do we need electrical power to our house? On one hand we want it because it's nice to have lights and air conditioning. On the other hand, we need it because America has become a society that uses refridgerators. Companies selling blocks of ice are hard to find these days. Maybe we should just take a trip to the poorest part of Africa to find out what we really need in life. In industrialized, materialized America it would be difficult to even run a legitimate "want" vs "need" experiment.

By the way and ironically... our air conditioner went out tonight.