Wants Versus Needs

Our roots reach down, our branches rise
From sky to ground, our wooden eyes
Have gazed upon desires, hope, and greed
But to each soul who walks this way
A tree disclaimer we must say
We give not what you want - but what you need

— Tree Shamans, Centaurworld episode "What You Need"

The thing you want is not always the thing you need. It might be difficult to tell them apart and sometimes you don't realize it until you get one or the other.

This is typically used as the moral of a story: a character fights tooth and nail to get what they want, only to realize later down the line that it wasn't what they needed. A character's wants and needs are typically associated with their Character Arc, which is usually framed as a resolution of the conflict between these two motivations. They might have wanted money or power, when what they needed was love and friendship. Characters who don't learn this lesson might get what they want, but not in the way they wanted it, forsaking their needs and ultimately descending into misery.

Half the time, the story ends with the character getting what they want and what they need, sometimes in the form of a singular Karmic Jackpot, the lesson merely being that they learned the difference at all.

Characters who embody these two ideas will often act as metaphorical devils and angels on the hero's shoulder respectively: a villainous character will give them the thing that they want, but at an unpayable price. The good character meanwhile won't give them what they want and try to tell them what they need instead, it being up to the hero to discover this for themselves.

MacGuffin Guardians will often be the Aesop Enforcer in stories like this, often having what the protagonist or antagonist wants, but refusing to give it to them. Or maybe forcing what they needed onto them against their will.

Compare and contrast Wanting Is Better Than Having. It might also come in conjunction with being Lonely at the Top.

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Examples:

Films — Animation

• Leroy & Stitch: Stitch, Pleakley and Jumba want to pursue careers, so they go their separate ways, leaving Lilo behind. They all end up lonely and unhappy. In the end, they decide to reunite and stay with Lilo.
• The Central Theme of The Princess and the Frog is this. The Big Bad Dr. Facilier represents the "Want" side of things: his goals are based on Greed, having literally sold his soul for magic that would give him a leg-up and will often make deals with other characters that gives them the thing they want (revenge, social status, hair, "green"), but it will often not be what they actually wanted. In contrast, Big Good Mama Odie represents "Need", her entire song number "Dig A Little Deeper" being about how what the protagonists want to be turned human for personal reasons (Tiana wanting to own her own restaurant, Naveen wanting his playboy lifestyle, Louis wanting to be in a band) before explaining to them that what they want isn't what they need. While Facilier's short-sighted ambitions end with him being Dragged Off to Hell, the protagonists all get what they need in the end. While Tiana does get that restaurant in the end, it's with the help of her new friends and the man she fell in love with Naveen. While Naveen doesn't get to be Idle Rich like he wanted, he marries Tiana and finds fulfillment working at her restaurant. Louis manages to play in a Jazz band without needing to be turned human, playing at Tiana's restaurant every night.
• In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the MacGuffin everyone is after is a star that grants any wish, all of the parties involved trying to get to it because there is something they want out of it under the assumption that it will somehow fix their flawed lives.
  • Puss in Boots goes after the star to wish for more lives out of a sense of self-preservation. He's on his last life, and with the Wolf — an enemy that could actually kill him for good — on his tail, Puss sees the wishing star as a method of survival. By the end of the story, his Character Development had led to him deciding that his one last life is worth fighting for. Seeing him humbled, The Wolf leaves him be.
  • After Puss left her at the altar, Kitty Softpaws went back to being a cynical, backstabbing thief because she feels like she has no one she could trust. Because of that, she wants to wish that there was someone she could trust. On their way to the wish, she grows to trust Puss and Perrito.
  • The Wolf — revealed to be The Grim Reaper — doesn't want the wish, but is simply out to kill Puss because he took his first eight lives for granted. After spending the whole movie putting the fear of God into Puss, this ironically helped Puss along in his Character Development. By the time the Wolf has an opening, he begrudgingly lets Puss live (for now) because he has learned to value the one life he has left.
  • The Three Bears think that Goldilocks has a wish in mind that will make them all rich and prosperous as a crime family, but Goldi wants to use the wish for a human family. By the end of the movie, she gives up the wish to save her family and whether she's a human or a bear, the Three Bears are her family. Not only that, but with Jack Horner dead, that leaves an Evil Power Vacuum and a massive baking's empire for them to take over.
  • While not a Tragic Villain, "Big" Jack Horner falls under the more tragic end of the trope; he was born and raised in a stable home with all the wealth and stability he could ever need or want, but he's jealous that he's nothing more than a footnote in a nursery rhyme while there are other more impressive fairy tale creatures with magic at their disposal. With the wish, he could have all the magic he could ever want, as in he would have all of the magic in the world to himself and he would become a god. After the other characters resolve their issues and decide not to use the wish, they all work together to ensure that he doesn't get his wish because of the threat he would pose if he got it.
• In Shrek, Shrek agrees to rescue Fiona from her tower and bring her to Lord Farquad in exchange for having his Swamplands to himself again, having lived feared and alone for so long that all he wants is privacy. Having been raised as a fairy tale princess, all Fiona wants is to be rescued by her own Prince Charming and to live Happily Ever After free of her curse. By the end, the both of them get what they want, but in a way that they both needed: while Shrek gets his swamp back, he learns to open himself up, marrying Fiona and finding friends among a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits he originally wanted out. While Fiona's curse is technically broken and she does live Happily Ever After with a charming man she married, it's as an ogre with a non-royal ogre for a husband in a swamp. Not that either of them mind.

Films — Live-Action

• Thematically, the Darkhold and the Book of Vishanti from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has elements of this respectively.
  • The Darkhold is a Tome of Eldritch Lore that magically displays any information the viewer desires, whether it's insanely powerful spells that defy the very boundaries of the multiverse or scientific schematics that violates the laws of physics. The Darkhold is also an Artifact of Doom, as it's shown to corrupt anyone who uses it. Even a passing glance guarantees a Face–Heel Turn, as was the case with Holden Radcliffe in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., though whether the Darkhold does this on purpose or it These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know is kept vague. The fact that the pages were transcribed from the walls of a temple dedicated to the Scarlet Witch, the MCU's answer to The Antichrist, only compounds the issue.
  • The Book of Vishanti is one of the most powerful Artifacts of Hope in the multiverse, the equal-opposite to the Darkhold in every way. While the specifics are never given, its primary use is to give any sorcerer who reads it the answers to whatever problems they face, giving them what they "need" as opposed to the Darkhold's tactic of handing its user power on a silver-platter.

Literature

• In Animorphs #13: The Change, Tobias begs the Ellimist to make him human again, but the Ellimist asks him if he's sure that's what he needs. In the end, he restores Tobias' morphing ability, but his base form is still a red-tailed hawk, allowing him to continue the fight without having to return to his terrible home life.
• Discworld: This is at the heart of Granny Weatherwax's Good Is Not Nice attitude — being a witch is less about magic than about knowing the people in her territory and doing what needs to be done for them, whatever their feelings on the matter. In "The Sea and Little Fishes", Nanny Ogg reflects on how isolating this can be:
  Like old Pollirt the other day, when he fell off his horse. What he wanted was a painkiller. What he needed was the few seconds of agony as Granny popped the joint back into place. The trouble was, people remembered the pain.
• Olivia: In one book, Olivia says to her mother that she "needs" a new bow, bike, and book from the store. Her mother asks if she truly needs those things or just wants them, and after mulling it over, Olivia decides that while she does need a new book (for a book report), she just wanted a new bow and bike.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: The episode The Doctor's Wife has the TARDIS upload its consciousness into a woman's body, allowing the Doctor to speak with her directly. One of the things that comes up is the Doctor complaining about how the TARDIS never takes him where he wants to go but the TARDIS responds that it always takes him where he needs to be and indeed the Doctor has become a legend across time and space who has saved countless worlds and even the universe itself more than once. Even if the Doctor would rather explore the universe at his own leisure.

Music

• The Rolling Stones: "You Can't Always Get What You Want" sings about discontentment in life, but contrasts against uplifting production and ends each chorus on the message, "But if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need."
• R.E.M.'s "Finest Worksong", according to frontman Michael Stipe, attacks "the idea that you can work and work, and get what you want, and then try for even more. It's the American dream, but it's a pipe dream that's been exploited for years."
  Take your instinct by the reins,
  You're better best to rearrange.
  What we want and what we need
  Has been confused, been confused.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: In "The Gorg Who Would Be King", Junior finds out that he will become King of the Universe when the last leaf falls off the Nirvana Tree, and all but one have already fallen off. Not wanting the responsibility of ruling the whole universe, Junior thinks that getting rid of the leaf would mean he'd never become King, so he secretly eats it... and is shrunk to the size of a Fraggle. When Wembley takes him to the Trash Heap, she explains that "when you eat a Nirvana Tree leaf, you don't always get what you want. But you just might find you get what you need." What Junior needed was to understand the universe, see what it's like to be a Fraggle, and learn how the Fraggles, the Doozers, and the Gorgs are all connected. In the end, Junior understands how the universe works and stands up to his father after he almost destroyed the Fraggles with a bomb. He grows back to normal and is crowned King, then decides that the universe doesn't need a king and throws the crown away.

Western Animation

• Centaurworld: The Tree Shamans are a pair of treetaurs who use their magic to help those who come to them. They will usually give a "disclaimer" that they will use their magic to give a person what they need over what they want, claiming to be so old and wise that they would know the difference on sight. While they are usually right, they can also come across as rather callous.
• Craig of the Creek: The episode "Too Many Treasures" is about Craig grabbing every "treasure" he sees, to the point his closet is filled with them. Craig's mom tells him about how she has her students look at their belongings and separate what they want from what they need, and encourages Craig to do the same. Craig is ultimately forced to accept that most of his treasures were stuff that he wanted and has to discard them to save himself and The Junk Lord from the crashing boat.
• The Owl House:
  • Luz Noceda aspires to be a stunning admirable witch like the hero of her favorite book The Good Witch Azura, but she finds that her apprenticeship under the eccentric witch Eda doesn't resemble the elegant fantasy life she seeks. Many times her expectations of how to learn magic are turned on their head, such as when she dismisses Eda's garbage-diving as humiliating but the "trash" she finds turns out to be a source of hidden magic. Eventually, it becomes evident that Eda and King needed her more than she needed them, teaching Eda how to perform glyph magic when her own magic fails and becoming a protective sister to King.
  • Amity Blight is introduced as an Alpha Bitch bully who wants to be the top of her class, graduate into the prestigious Emperor's Coven, and hates Luz for inadvertently throwing wrenches into her plans. As time passes, she becomes more comfortable with not being the top student, realizes the Emperor's Coven isn't as great as it seemed, and even develops a budding love for Luz.
  • Eda Clawthorne is proud of being the most powerful witch of the Boiling Isles, but she's hampered by a terrible curse that hinders her magic and threatens to turn her into a monster. She initially wants to be free of the curse especially after it strengthens to take all her magic permanently. Eventually she decides to call a truce with the wild owl beast who feels just as trapped in her body, and the two merge into a powerful new Harpy form. While she doesn't do a very good job at teach Luz how to perform magic, she ends up developing a maternal side she didn't know she had, Luz's presence in her life giving her a reason to live outside of the aimless rebelliousness she had cultivated in her teen years.
  • King believes himself to be a "King of Demons" who deserves worship, and boasts of his goals to assemble a mighty army of demons and conquer the Boiling Isles. It later turns out that he is not a demon, but a Titan, an extinct species who are worshipped as gods on the Isles. However, King finds he actually doesn't like receiving praise without companionship, and admits he'd rather just have a family instead of being the lonely Last of His Kind.
  • Lilith Clawthorne, the head of the Emperor's Coven, is insistent on getting her sister Eda registered into the Coven and having her curse healed. Gradually it becomes clear that this is Lilith's way of trying to cover up her mistake without actually being making herself accountable for it, her mistake being cursing Eda in the first place. Once Lilith realizes the Coven will never help Eda, she owns up to her transgression and shares the curse with Eda, relieving her sister of the worst effects while robbing Lilith of her own magic.
  • Hunter is the Golden Guard and only wants to please the emperor, his manipulative and abusive uncle, resulting in him having a screwed up belief that he needs to be useful to be loved. In "Eclipse Lake", he tries to find Titan blood for Belos and attacks Amity for the portal key while rejecting her attempt at encouraging him to find someone who won't make him feel worthless. He starts doing better emotionally when he runs away from Belos and joins up with Willow and Gus, gaining the unconditional support he needs rather than the fake love he was taught to want from his creator.
  • Camila Noceda wants more than anything for her daughter to have a happy and fulfilling life. However, she feels that in order to do so she has to suppress her daughter's nerdy and energetic tendencies in order for Luz to have said fulfilling life. Learning that she can help her daughter to be a functioning member of the world while embracing her status as a noble Witch is central to Camila's Character Development.
• VeggieTales: Discussed in "Gideon: Tuba Warrior" features a story about George Muller and how he would always pray for what was needed for his orphanage. In this case, food for breakfast. Mr. Lunt says he should have prayed for a plasma flat screen TV.
  Larry: I am pretty sure George Muller knew the difference between a need and a want.
• Wander over Yonder: The eponymous Wander wears a hat which magically produces anything for him to take; according to "The Hat", the hat does not give what the user wants, but what they need, depending on the situation that they're in at the moment. "The Bad Hatter" reveals if someone demands something from the hat as a want rather than a need as usual, it causes it to suffer mass hysteria and spew out geysers of stuff nonstop.

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