Need:  An urgent requirement of something essential or desirable that is lacking.

I watched a documentary on The Television that followed the lives of 5 different people who won unconscionable amounts of money in the lottery.  I assumed that most people who go from having no money to having a lot of money make a mess of things.  Predictably, a couple of them blew through their money quickly, wasting it extravagantly, foolishly.  One guy was homeless; he took a room in a cheap hotel and seemed content to live quietly, not really spending money on much of anything.

The family who won the most obscene amount of cash was an interesting case.  They had convinced themselves that money wasn't important to them and wasn't going to change the way they lived their lives.  But they bought Ferraris and mansions and an 80 foot yacht, and they donated money regularly.  They didn't donate anything anonymously, curiously enough, preferring the face to face donation.  They seemed to be a little smug.  They seemed to be a little more humble than everyone else, always a bad sign. "Who are their friends now?" I wondered.  "The other people living in big mansions?"  I didn't see how.  The people in the big mansions probably weren't looking to make friends with lottery winners.

I'm probably a little jealous of this family.  They didn't snort everything up their nose or try to get to know some rappers, but it still seemed a little off to me.  They seemed proud of their good fortune, not grateful.  Stuff didn't seem to change them appreciably but they became defined by it.

One of the winners was a Vietnamese refugee who was working in some godawful food processing plant.  This man spent a lot of money building houses for his kids and relatives so they could all live near each other.  Then he went back to Vietnam and built a huge housing complex for like 50 or 60 of his extended family, people who had been living in poverty.  He looked to be pretty happy, but he looked like he was living in some other person's house.  Kind of how I would look hanging out with rock stars.  Out of place.

I thought the most interesting case was a mathematics professor who thought he wanted to buy a Bugatti and a villa in the south of France.  His wife left him almost immediately, taking half the fortune, I'm sure.  He ended up buying a new car -- a Cadillac -- and fixing up his house a little bit but that was about it.  He did nice things with his money for his friends.  He did quit his job, thank god, but wasn't an idiotic rich guy or a splashy rich guy or a miserly one.  He did some things he always wanted to do but never had the time for like taking singing lessons.  He really seemed to enjoy singing despite the fact that he was terrible.  I don't think he cared.  He liked to sing and now he had the time to do it.

"I realized," he said, "that I was buying a lottery ticket so I could dream.  Once I had the money I realized that it wasn't anything that was going to make me happy."  He would have looked ridiculous in his villa in the south of France, with his red Bugatti.

Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't.  Sometimes you get what you want and you say: "WTF!?"  It doesn't work out like you think it should.  It goes all weird and sideways on you.

Mostly, you get what you need.  Hey, if the Rolling Stones can put those lyrics into a song then it can't be that profound.

Bend To My Iron Will

Expectation:  A looking forward to as due, proper, or necessary; anticipation.

I think that my understanding of the concept of expectation tends to be a little harsh.  I have a tendency to warp most things until they no longer resemble their original state.  Often I confuse expectation with something that is more like demanding.  If I think something is due me or I must have it or it's my birthright then I get in trouble.  That's insistent.  There's no play in that attitude.

"Things will happen like this," I think, rigidly.  I get on my bulldozer and fire up the diesel.  But when I step back and try to analyze what's really going on I find that half the time I don't even know what I want.  And god forbid I get what I think I want.

That's usually a total disaster.