This is a topic that came up about three years ago when I still lived in Minnesota. One of the elder members in a circle of friends once asked the rest of us...what do you really need in life? Of course, we gave the standard pat answers like love, money, a home...

The gentlemen, being the sage that he was, began to ask us if we REALLY needed those things...or if they were just "wants". It was a discussion that we never truly finished, but the idea of it stayed with me.

Is this a problem in our society? We think we NEED so many things that are just things we want?

For example, to live, we really, only, truly NEED:

*Food
*Water
*Air

These three things allow our body to sustain life. We could live without anything else, but what kind of life would it be? Yuck. I guess one needs to define NEED and LIVE.

For me, personally, I would "need" the following to "live."

*Food
*Water
*Air
*Human Companionship
*Money
*Shelter

I think I could maybe get by on these six things. What about you? If you had to get it down to the barebone necessities - what would they be?