Swap-want

The things you want in life, in your own mind, sometimes manage to outweigh the things you need. If you set your mind to believing that you want something badly enough you will believe you need it. Need it more than the things you actually do need. You meet a girl, you hang out, you stay up the whole night talking and you know that you've got to be up at 5:30 for work but for some strange reason you feel compelled to stay up with this girl. You tell yourself sleep is not important, that you don't need it. Right now you NEED to stay up and hang out with this girl. Who knows you might not get tomorrow.

This is a feeling. A feeling that we do not have a name for. The feeling of wanting something so badly you swap your wants for needs and your needs for wants. This feeling is now known as swap-want.

Swap-want usually occurs in a situation of mass desire. When you want something so so so badly. You can only trick your mind that badly if you want something that badly. If swap-want occurs it is usually a good thing and you should probably just roll with it. It shows exactly how badly you want something and what you are willing to do for it. Ditching a 'need' for a 'want' is a big deal. When you hit the swap-want level just give up fighting yourself right there, you've already lost the battle. The next day/morning/hour later/week later/ whatever you are either going to think one of two things.

A. Your swap-want was good. The missing and unattended to 'need' is fine and you'll recover eventually and the converted 'want' is now a need or will forever manifest itself in your mind as if it was a need.

B. The swap-want was bad. You are angry at yourself for letting you be so stupid as to get tricked by you. The former need is now an ever bigger need and the want is now not even worth thinking about because you've lost that much time over it already.

Whatever the outcome, the swap-want won. Congratulations, sir.
Swap-want - 1 You - 0
Actually I'm fairy sure it would have a much higher score than 1 but whatever. The point is that it wins every time. Good outcome, bad outcome, it is always the outcome.

You need swap-wants though. They keep your life interesting, keep you doing crazy things, get you away from the normal every day shit and doing something different from what you would normally do and that's good!


In all honesty, you've probably never even noticed swap-wants before because you don't over-analyze absolutely everything however significant or insignificant in your daily life like I do. The next time you do though, you will notice and be like 'holy cow, that prick was right' and we all know how much I love to be right. If you ever find yourself asking yourself 'do I really want something? Am I really willing to fight for this? Would I make sacrifices for this?' then look back and think if you've ever done a swap-want for it. If you have, then there's your answer, you want it and you want it bad. You sacrificed a legitimate need-to-live-need for something that you at the time thought you just 'wanted'. We both now know that you more than just wanted it.


Swap-want is really just a need in disguise. You just don't know you need it yet.