Desire or need?

there's an old saying,
"an old monkey never puts his hand in the hole".

the logic behind is that in India,
hunters used to cut tiny holes in coconuts,
placed a banana in them
and proceeds to bury the whole thing.
a monkey will then come up,
puts his hand in to grab the banana
only to find that it has been trapped
as his clenched fist was too huge to remove from the hole.

now, he could have released his grip,
but he feels that there is a need for that banana,
and stubbornly chooses to hang on
and fight a battle he can never win,
struggling to pluck his hand with the banana out.

this applies to humans too,
we often feel that there is a need for something,
so much so that we become imprisoned in some way.
the luring entrapment of this impending "need"
has always imprisoned inexperienced people,
with them thinking that they can satisfy the "need".

now, don't you agree that the monkey
could have let go and found another source of food?
yet it stubbornly thinks it needs this one.
just like us,
the monkey and humans,
we haven't learnt to differentiate
between needs and wants.

wants are desires,
we will always convince ourselves that we need it,
so we fight so hard for it,
we never see that we have trapped ourselves
either in debt or in the quest,
to satisfy a desire,
IF A DESIRE COULD BE SATISFIED,
IT WILL CEASE TO BE A DESIRE.
we will never achieve what we want,
if we don't learn to let go.