The hungry man

For most of my life I was hungry.

Not for food. For something harder to name. Meaning, maybe. Recognition. A particular kind of connection that would finally make the inside feel settled.

The hunger drove a lot of decisions. Some of them looked good from the outside. None of them touched the thing underneath.

The problem with hunger is that it doesn't discriminate. A hungry man eats anything available. He'll take the imitation of the thing he needs and call it the thing itself -- because hunger doesn't wait, and it isn't precise.

I'm not talking only about relationships, though it shows up there most clearly. It shows up in work. In friendships. In the groups we join and the causes we attach to. Anywhere the inside is empty, the outside gets recruited to fill it.

Then something changed. Not overnight. Not cleanly. But the source I'd been searching for outside turned out to be an inside job.

When the hunger quiets -- really quiets, not just gets temporarily fed -- something shifts in how you move through the world. You can be with people without needing them to complete something. You can want without being driven by the wanting. You can wait, not because you've given up, but because you're genuinely fine either way.

The real thing is still worth wanting. But you stop mistaking the available thing for the real thing.

That's the difference hunger makes. And the difference its absence makes.

What has your hunger recruited to fill something it couldn't actually fill?