Thank you for sharing this quote. I’ve advocated here before to try to “be friends with your hunger” because I’ve found a lot of joy in that. I can certainly see the value in framing it as laughing at it, but it sounds so…adversarial.
I like feeling hungry. My hunger and I are chilling, appreciating all those little chemical fires in my belly. There is possibly no more universally felt experience among living creatures than this desire to consume. For millions of years everything that has ever lived breathed and died has hungered. Felt these same ancient homeostatic drives that we do. I like to think it connects us in a certain way.
So now thanks to you - I would crack jokes at my hunger. I will tell my hunger to go sleep for long and get busy thinking about the harm it is causing to my cupboard. There are so many dresses I have not worn. I MUST wear them. Water is precious. I would also teach my hunger boundaries.
I remember loving that book when I was in high school, but then I read it a couple of years back and could barely finish it. I started losing it right about when Hesse mentioned Kamala’s “fresh cut fig” lips for the 3rd or 4th time. Painful. It’s great until that point, and it has moments after that point, but it kinda loses its momentum for me during that long section (and the end just seems to go on and on).
/end digression
Sorry about that.
But yes, he is right that learning to fast, think, and wait are very helpful skills in life.