A list of her hungers

Fill the blank canvas of your soul with your hungers, and the satiating of your hungers.

She held the crumpled paper in her hands. She could smell how old it was. She smiled gently to herself as she began to unfold the paper. Wrinkled, smudged, barely legible in parts – it was an old list of her hungers. Hungers she has written down, maybe seventy years ago. A whole lifetime ago.

Then, she was hungry for love, for meeting men, for finding friends. She was hungry for a career, for work in the world, to prove herself creatively. Hungry to take up her space on the earth. She was hungry for all the things that would satisfy deep in the marrow. The things that would make her feel free. Hungry for adventure, for adrenaline, for bliss. She was hungry for so much, in that youth, when she was still waking up in life and finding her bearing.

Lovingly she unraveled the list. She felt such tenderness for that young thing. So passionate, unstoppable, hungry.

She nodded to herself. Yes – you have satiated all your hungers now. You found the love of your life, and lived and grew with him for fifty years. Then you lost him. Your life was filled with deep friendships, some for a short while, some for a longer while. And you lost each of them, one by one, like pearl beads dropping off a string and scattering on the floor. You found your meaningful work and devoted your life to it. That too, is gone now. It let go of you when it was time.

You voraciously pursued and expressed your creative voice in the world, every single day of your life. And that, too, has become less important. You found freedom. It was different than what you imagined. You participated in adventure after adventure in your life, and now your wanderlust has been sated. Yes, she smiled to herself as she flattened the paper with her wrinkled hands. I have satiated all my hungers, and I have lost everything that I hungered for.

The only thing that I have not lost is myself.

That same self that was there seventy years ago – writing her list of young hungers. It was not wrong to hunger. And it was not wrong to satiate those hungers. It was life itself. And you have come back to your young, hungering self and realized that she is the same as your aged, satiated self. Two aspects of the same life.

She sighed with pleasure, thankful to have lived this beautiful paradox. And thankful to be reflecting on it, with a clear mind and an open heart, on her One-hundredth birthday.

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