Taming hunger: Make do with what you have, happy with what you have not
Greed is a hungry hunter that lives in the hearts of men.
Alone of all the primitive peoples of the past, the Eskimos or the Inuit lived 900 miles from the North Pole in the inhospitable Arctic and subarctic regions from eastern Siberia to Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland. These circumpolar peoples lived on top of everybody else in the world, under the most forbidding and formidable conditions that any human being can endure. Average temperature during winter is 10 below zero while that in summer is just above the freezing point. For four months in winter, from November to February, they don’t get to see the sun at all. The Bedouins, on the other hand, were nomadic Arab tribes who have traditionally inhabited the vast desert regions of North Africa all the way to the rocky sands of the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East.
And yet, many of the desert tribes of North Africa do not realize that beneath them lies the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the world’s largest known fossil water aquifer system, containing an estimated 150,000 cubic kilometers of clean, clear groundwater which is more than enough to make all the deserts of Africa bloom. Who among the Eskimos of old, they who used to burn blubber for light and warmth, knew that under their very feet sprawls the vast Canadian Shield, stretching north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, covering over half of Canada and most of Greenland? Beneath the surface of this geologic shield lie huge deposits of minerals, metallic ores, and petroleum of a quantity that is more than enough to provide heat and light to millions of people.
In the north, people of the snow countries hunger for the warmth of the unseen sun during winter. In the south, people of the world’s deserts are hungry for water. Elsewhere in the world, people hunger for food, for love, for peace, for truth, and for justice. We have a constant hunger. We are always full of longing. We want, endlessly, to be happy, and to be free.
The result of a Social Weather Stations survey conducted in April of this year showed that 3.1 million Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger, which is defined as “being hungry and not having anything to eat at least once in the past three months.” Of this number, 2.9 percent (744,000) experienced severe hunger “often” or “always.” Though unwelcome, hunger is a familiar guest and visitor in many Filipino households. According to the 2021 Philippine Statistics Authority survey, 20 million Filipinos live below the poverty line.
The Philippines is an archipelago surrounded on all sides by seas, teeming with fish we cannot even catch because only outsiders and foreigners are allowed to do so. Despite the brazen lie peddled by the government that you can buy a complete meal for P18, we the people have grown wise to the fact that Marie Antoinette lost her head when she used the same ploy to dupe the starving hoi polloi of 18th-century France into thinking they should eat cake in the absence of bread.
The human heart is a rimless, bottomless jar that no Nile nor Niagara could fill or fulfill. We can be living in a big house, yet still feel empty all over; we can die of thirst while adrift in the middle of the ocean.
Yet, we hold within us a vast aquifer of indomitability, an impregnable shield of hope. The secret of happiness is not to be found in feeding our hunger for more but in settling for what we have less of. Some of us get to see the northern lights while some enjoy their desert sunsets. You cannot have it all. Starve your greed. Desire nothing that you have not and you will want for nothing. Make do with what you have. Be happy with what you have not.
Antonio Calipjo Go, Quezon City
