Famished

Waya makuntento? This was asked by someone who tried to understand an acquaintance who is having multiple affairs even if the person is already married. The discussion segued to human nature. There is some sort of hunger one will have when something is deprived of him/her. There was even a warning given by experts not to be in a grocery store when one is hungry. Chances are, you will buy unnecessary things without thinking properly. The compulsion is driven by the hunger…reason and even moral sieving will be NOT present.

Hunger is a powerful emotion, which is both exploitative and destructive to others when it is acted out. People identify this feeling with love and mistakenly associate these longings with genuine affection. Nothing could be further from the truth.

According to Firestone (2009), feelings of emotional hunger are deep and are like a dull but powerful aching in your insides. You may often find yourself reaching out and touching others or expressing affection and loving movements in order to attempt to kill off this aching sensation. People often give physical affection and attention when they feel the most need for it themselves.

Psychologists say that such hunger is a strong emotional need caused by deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people often act out in a desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be fully satisfied in an adult relationship.

What about those who continuously crave for accomplishment and recognition? Why is it so difficult for them to be contented? What kind of hunger is this?

While all humans need affirmation from others, different people have different sorts of recognition hunger. Some are so internally weak, they need constant validation and applause. They seek publicity for themselves. They want to be noticed, and they ache when they are not noticed. The hungrier they are for recognition, the weaker they are within themselves. They don’t think their life matters unless they receive constant attention, however superficial or ephemeral. It may seem odd, but it is often very true, that the most “popular” and “powerful” people are also the most lonely and insecure people (Rabbi Marc Angel, 2018).

People with excessive recognition hunger are so worried about their own egos, that they are callous when it comes to caring about others. They want praise aimed at themselves; they are self-centered and self-serving. They will step on anyone and do almost anything in order to advance themselves and gain more recognition (Transactional Analysis, Berne).

It is a human need to be recognized. It has been a subject of multiple discussions anchored on Maslow’s theory of motivation. But there is always a time to reach the point of being self-actualized. During adulthood it could be queer when one is constantly craving for attention and recognition if he/she already has a handful of them. The hunger must be checked by the individual so that he or she must level up to being actualized and could now SERVE. The person will then become a worker FOR others (i.e. the family, community and others).

Theo Tsaousides, Ph.D (2018) mentions that a periodic assessment of your life satisfaction provides you with a mirror on which you can reflect your accomplishments, your desires, and your unfulfilled needs all at once. It provides a global picture of your progress in life in relation to your own expectations, and it becomes a good starting point to begin exploring in more depth what contributes to the quality of your life and what is taking away from it.

Confronting the “hungers” (which Eric Berne identified as Stimulus, Recognition, Contact, Sexual, Time Structure and Incident) is a personal journey. It has been mentioned many times that a person must journey from the Self to the Self so to be able to understand himself/herself better. Once the person conquers such hungers, the main function (that is to serve the self and others) could now be attained.

Martin Luther King aptly said it: “This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.”