The Hunger For More: On honoring what we want AND our exhaustion

[Originally published on Substack on May 10, 2024. Moving it here as part of building a more complete, unified archive of my work.]

I am hungry. Oh so very hungry.

That gnawing, unsettled feeling of needing more. My body knows it.

But gosh, my brain is trying to tell me, “no, you’re fine. You’re just making excuses. Ignore that gnawing, that knowing, and sit here and do that thing on your to-do list today. Just push through.”

I’ve been through the cycles of gaining and losing weight for about as long as I can remember. How many times in my life have I learned to suppress the hunger? Scratch that, how many times per DAY have I insisted on suppressing my hunger? “Just push through”, over and over again.

And do we even need to get started on how society views women’s hunger?

But today, I’m not really talking about physical hunger. (Well, actually, it started out as physical hunger, but then I got myself a delicious bagel sandwich [f_ off, diet rules] and now I’m all good in that respect.)

What I’m talking about today is the hunger for more, different, new in my life. More experiences, more conversations, more exploring ideas in new ways. More connection. More growth.

(And I was wrong to say it’s not a physical hunger, because I actually do think it’s physical. A restlessness. A shakiness. Our cells, molecules, electrons inside of us know. We’ve just learned all too well how to ignore our body when it’s telling us it wants more.)

I am hungry for creating. For expressing myself. Because now, after how many decades of life, I have realized that maybe I might have something to contribute. Something that’s not based solely on my professional skills. I am MORE than that. And I’m learning that we all have something important to share based on the truth of who we are (not just what we know). We are here to influence the world, simply because we exist in it. Let’s amplify that in ourselves, and grant permission for others to do the same.

I am hungry for the world I want to live in. A world where we support and celebrate each other’s choices and efforts and dreams and desires, even when those choices don’t fully make sense to us. A world where we take breaks for rest, re-centering, reset, without need to explain ourselves to anyone else. A world where we exist in the right now, not in perpetual planning or worry about the future or rumination on anything we’ve done “wrong” in the past (because that past is not who we are right now). A world where we connect as real humans, with the truth of who we are, unbound by expectations from a culture that was never really designed for us, anyway. A world where curiosity is paramount. A world where we have the space and nourishment to show up at who we want to be.

I am hungry for building my dreams and playing my part to bring this world I want to live in into existence, little bit by little bit.

But at the same time, I am EXHAUSTED. And that conflict between the hunger and the exhaustion is problematic, and is the truth of my experience today (and most days, honestly).

I find myself in this unsettled place, of knowing what I want to work on and why I want to do it battling with the brain fog and lack of energy from the already-doing-too-muchness of life.

So of course my logical brain spins into “well, schedule this into your day”, “delete this”, “delegate that”, “get more rest (because you know you’re allowed to rest, right?)”, how can you FIX THIS? But, of course, the non-stop problem-solving only generates more fatigue.

So today, I find myself asking is there another way? What if my logical, planning brain is not the place to find the answer to this particular problem?

When I think about feeding physical, stomach hunger when I’m completely fatigued, I know that I tend to reach for whatever is closest and most accessible, regardless of the nourishment value of the particular item. Which then generates a cycle of continuous hunger that is never really fed. I wonder if we do this with the hunger of wanting more in life, too?

Where do I put my efforts and focus when I’m exhausted? It’s on the closest and most accessible tasks (of which there there is a non-stop stream of oh-so-many things to address). Or it’s on the stuff that others are expecting from me. The things that might on the surface level provide that feeling that I am feeding the hunger to get stuff done, but doesn’t actually provide the nourishment I’m actually longing for.

So, what might a different way look like? A way that doesn’t demand sacrifice or problem-solving or alignment with something that doesn’t feel true in our experience of the moment?

I pose this as a question, because I don’t really know the answer. Some initial thoughts that come to mind:

• What if it’s about designating a space in our selves for the exhaustion to exist? What if it’s about creating a room for exhaustion in the house of our body, rather than trying to expel the exhaustion? I think in my tendency to problem-solve how to feed the hunger in the face of exhaustion, I am often trying to fix the exhaustion element, to create space for the energy required to create, express, build the things I want to build. But what if that “expel energy” is what is taking up all of the creative space, instead of the exhaustion itself? What would happen if we let a designated room for exhaustion exist in the same house that the hunger lives in?

• Or, what if it’s about really savoring the experiences that DO feed the hunger? How often in our desires for MORE do we forget how meaningful the small steps are? I know I tend to want to feel like I am making leaps and bounds of progress in order for my efforts to really count, but what would happen if we instead revel in the smaller moments of it (in metaphorical parallel to smaller, nourishing meals) and appreciate and prioritize momentum over outcome?

  
  

I don’t know, those are just a couple of thoughts that come to mind. I’m sure there are more possibilities, more questions to ask, more approaches to explore. This will probably be a question I continue to ponder for a while, and I’d love to hear your thoughts or ideas. But one thing I know for certain is that our hunger is not wrong. And our exhaustion is not wrong. So let’s find a way to feed the hunger and nourish our desires, because that is what is going to change the world.

Just for fun, here’s a picture of my writing companion on this rainy Friday.