We can never get enough of what we don't really need.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
In our striving to be happy, Matthew Kelly points out, we often elevate to the status of need that which is not truly a need. When we do, we just can't get enough of it, and often enter into addiction, whether to a substance or a habit, a mode of being or way of thinking, an emotional state or a dysfunctional relationship. There can be a wide variety of things we embrace that are a form of elevating a desire to the status of need, and we should be on the watch against this tendency.
On the other hand are our legitimate needs. As with so much of life, we tend toward a pair of antipodal mistakes with regard to them. With regard to some of our legitimate needs, we spend so much time fretting about them that we interfere with them or with other legitimate needs in our lives. We have no trust in God to provide what we truly need by any other means but our own efforts, embracing the adage that "God helps those who help themselves," certain that its inverse is true as well. So we end up spending inordinate amounts of time and energy on those things that God would have us trust in him for (after doing our part), often to the detriment of things that only we can do anything about. These things we often neglect for the sake of the things we consider more important, or at least more urgent.
All of which is a long way of observing that I sure haven't made much time for prayer lately, and maybe I should be doing that instead of writing.
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