I think, then, the difficulty of winter comes down to hunger. Yes, I think winter can be summed up in one word: Hunger. And even though the calendar tells us it is now spring, we still suffer the long-reaching effects of hunger. We suffer it even in the summertime. I think it is ingrained in every single cell of the human body. I think every fiber of our being screams out “Hunger!” most especially in the winter.
It’s not just a matter of having no food. We long ago figured out how to get around
that. Yes, eons ago there was the
all-consuming fear of no food anywhere, and that meant hunger and death. While that has left its imprint in our genes,
to be sure, it is not just the lack of food that causes hunger in the
winter. As I said, we have figured out
how to get around that. We know how to
plan ahead. We know how to save and
store food. In modern times, we have
businesses that do the planning and saving for us, and even if one cannot
afford to go to a store all the time, we have food kitchens and the kindness of
others. No, it is not just food.
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| The Earth hungers. |
And it’s not just the desire to see greenery again. It’s not the longing for trees and flowers
and grasses. Even though when we see
such things, a part of us is refilled again, there is still a nagging emptiness
and fear because of the hunger. We know
the greenery will leave us again.
It’s also not the absence of seeing wildlife, fish, and
birds. The abundance of the Earth in summer fills our senses with wonder and joy, but it never completely allays the
feeling of hunger. We may thirstily
drink in every life-filled activity we can think of: Lavish dinners, expensive drinks, vacations
to beautiful climates, gardening, animal care, nature walks, etc. We can titillate the senses and bring
tremendous joy to ourselves by doing these things, but in the end, we have to
face the winter again. We have to face
the hunger again.
I hunger. I
hunger. I hunger. And what is it? It is that we have seen death and we cannot
unsee it. Once seen, it is never forgotten. Life feeds upon life: That is the condition we accept for being
here. There is no other way to be alive
than to consume what was formerly alive.
We may toy with the idea that some life is more worthy than other life,
and so we consume what we relegate to a lower form of life. But we cannot escape it. We are born with the memory of death, and the
winter reminds us yearly that we will always be hungry, no matter how much we
may have.
