Keely

“Most people don't know how to starve... I guess that's a weird thing to say, but it's true. It's something you learn. People think that they have to be born one way, with resilience built in or some incapacity to burn, or whatever. Either you are or you aren't. That sort of thing. Like some people naturally want things and others want nothing. But it's not true. You can be taught to want, you can be taught to crave, and you can also learn to starve. The issue is when you eventually get fed... prosperity is anguish. The body adjusts, but the mind doesn't. You can't erase history, you can't just excise the wanting and worse, you forget the pain. Eventually you grow accustomed to excess and you can't go back, because all you remember are the aches of starvation, which you took so long to learn. How to give yourself only as much as you need to continue, that's a lesson. For some people its lifelong. For others, it's developmental if they're lucky and then eventually it fades. But still, you never forget it, how to starve, how to watch others with envy, how to silence the ache in your soul. Starvation is dormancy, isn't it? The mind still hungers, even when the body adjusts. There's tension, always. Survival only requires so much, but existence? Completion? That becomes insatiable. The longer you starve, the more haunting the ghost of starvation. After you've learned to starve when someone finally gives you something, you become a hoarder, you hoard., and technically that's the same as having, but it isn't, not really. Starvation continues, you still want, and wanting is the hard part. You can learn to starve but you can't learn how to have... the excess is a poison. Everything has the capacity to turn toxic.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six