मर्यादा

Hunger or acceptance

Feeling of hunger is innate and natural to all organisms. By definition, Hunger is a feeling of discomfort and weakness caused by a lack of food coupled with the desire to eat. It’s the most basic and essential signal mechanism which alerts any living things to go out and seek food for their survival. As soon as a child is born, hunger is the first feeling that’s expressed with urgency. 

Let’s think about hunger a little deeper. While this feeling is generally associated with food, we are also the most evolved organism on the planet. Maybe that’s a sheer coincidence that we are born human and reading or listening to this at this moment in life. Or maybe, that’s pre-planned. Who knows? But if you are, very likely you are hungry beyond food. As a human, we are hungry for a lot more than food. The energy cycles although explained by medical science in terms of nutrients and ingredients and chemicals and all that stuff that’s coming in or out of our body like a well-oiled machine. Although we all know, the oiling seems to fall apart chip by chip, slowly and we run to fix it..quickly… we want an easy fix…we are hungry for an easy fix so we need pills and more pills. We are always hungry to feel brand new, without knowing what being brand new felt like. 

So the hunger goes beyond food, it goes back to the feeling yourself, find meaning in your own life and also feeling accepted. The feeling of acceptance is as basic as hunger. The very first proof of acceptance is received through the breathing a lungful of air at birth. That’s the very first sign of being accepted on the planet. For anybody who is born with diseases struggle with a life long struggle to feel accepted in some shape or form. But does that mean the rest of us to don’t? No. 

With all the social norms created over the process of developing an organized and civilized society, the criteria’s of acceptance evolved. It isn’t enough anymore to be a fellow organism, or fellow human being or a fellow race, or color or gender or weight or shape or style or whatever.  The list goes on.

So what happens when we are constantly rejected and constantly fighting for acceptance? We are always deprived. We are ultimately exhausted fighting this battle of proving self-worth to our families, parents, friends, societies, children….anybody and ultimately ourselves. Yes, the biggest demon we are fighting most of the time is ourselves because we are hungry for acceptance. 

We are rejecting ourselves on various scales or measures that are handed down to us by everyone else. It starts as early as a baby when one is told to be ‘cuter’ or ‘prettier’ or ‘calmer’ than the other who is  ‘whiny’ or ‘noisy’ or basically not as expected by certain social patterns.  The labeling continues, oh yes teenagers are rebels, oh yes girls are dramatic, oh boys will be boys, men are grown kids, women are always making sacrifices and must continue to do so…. If you are thinking though, you will find that you are struggling to fit into so many of those labels. 

Your mind and personality look like a messed up board with post-it laid over and over and over. Being accepted is the ability to start from a clean slate. I don’t know how that is going to happen as I am no different than you are. I am as hungry for that acceptance as you are, but today I plan to start from myself and start peeling off those post it on after the other. It isn’t easy and it hurts too because this glue has got into your skin and there is a chance some of them will leave a scar. But it is better to let it heal now than never. It is better to face it and accept ourselves in our own skin than not. 

Our food source for acceptance is within us and may we all feel nourished in our lives.

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