The Hungry Ghost.

I heard something on a podcast recently that I haven't been able to shake. They were talking about Rainn Wilson. I didn't immediately recognize the name. Then they said Dwight from The Office. Oh. That guy.

Wilson has talked about an uncomfortable realization he had during those years. The Office was enormously successful. He was making good money, receiving Emmy nominations, and playing a character millions of people knew. By almost any conventional definition, he had made it.

And it wasn't enough.

He found himself wondering why he wasn't a movie star, why he wasn't getting bigger roles, and why there wasn't more. Wilson gave that feeling a name: the hungry ghost.

It was a term I'd never heard before. The idea comes from Buddhism, where hungry ghosts are traditionally depicted with enormous stomachs and impossibly small throats. They live in a state of constant craving, always wanting but never able to consume enough to feel satisfied.

The metaphor was new to me. The feeling wasn't.

For some time now, I've been trying to slow down, question my automatic responses, and pay more attention to why I'm always reaching toward whatever comes next. I just never thought of any of it as a hungry ghost. Then I heard Wilson describe his and thought, I know that feeling.

Maybe I've been feeding one most of my life.

Where My Hunger Came From

I didn't finish college. I dropped out to raise a family. It wasn't what I had planned. It was responsibility. Life had changed, and what I wanted for myself suddenly mattered less than what needed to be done.

So I went to work.

Looking back, I realize I didn't start out hungry for more. I started out afraid of having less. I had a family depending on me and a future I needed to figure out. I also didn't have the college degree I had expected to have.

I don't remember consciously deciding that I needed to compensate for that, but I think I did. Maybe accomplishment became my substitute credential. If I didn't have the degree, I could work harder, learn more, take on more responsibility, and make more money. I could prove that leaving college didn't determine where my life would end up.

Maybe I was proving it to other people. Maybe I was proving it to myself. Probably both.

So I pushed, and it worked.

Success felt good, but it also showed me what else was possible. More money. A better position. More responsibility. Another goal. There was always something else.

I kept believing there was a place somewhere ahead where I would finally think, There. I did it. That's enough.

But every time I got there, enough moved.

Looking at it through Wilson's metaphor now, I can see what was happening. A small success didn't satisfy the hunger. It fed it.

Ambition Isn't the Problem

This isn't a piece about the evils of ambition. Ambition is good. I think some degree of it may even be necessary. It pushes us to grow, learn, take risks, and discover what we're capable of.

I know what ambition did for me. It helped me build a career, provide for my family, and create a life I couldn't have imagined when I left college. I wouldn't change that.

Maybe the hungry ghost isn't the same thing as ambition. Maybe the hungry ghost is ambition without an off switch.

Ambition can say, Let's see how far I can go. But it still allows you to stop and take a breath. You can enjoy what you've accomplished, reevaluate where you're going, change direction, or decide the thing you were chasing doesn't matter anymore. You can even stop.

The hungry ghost can't. It only knows more.

That's a distinction I'm only now learning to put into words. I wasn't simply asking what else I could do. Somewhere in there, I was also asking what else I needed to do before I'd done enough.

Those sound like the same question, but they're not. Ambition allows more to become enough. The hungry ghost never does.

The Harder Hungers

Wilson's metaphor also gave me another way to think about something I've been exploring for a while: the less obvious hungers behind our automatic responses.

A promotion is easy to recognize as something I'm chasing. Being right isn't.

Someone disagrees with me and I'm already preparing my response. Something challenges what I believe and I start looking for evidence that supports my position. I don't understand something and I immediately want an answer.

Those reactions happen so quickly they don't feel like choices. They feel like me. That's what makes these hungers harder to see.

I've become more willing over the last several years to question things I once thought I understood. I don't want to stop doing that. We should question our assumptions, what we've been taught, what we believe, and even the things we're certain we're right about.

The hunger isn't in questioning. It's in needing an answer.

There's always one more book to read, another conversation to have, another idea that might finally remove the uncertainty. Then I'll understand. Then I'll know. Then I'll be settled.

But being curious enough to question and being uncomfortable with not knowing aren't the same thing. One opens the mind. The other just wants to close the question.

Different appetite. Same ghost.

Why the Metaphor Landed

Maybe that's why Wilson's metaphor landed with me when it did. I've already been trying to slow down and notice more of these automatic responses. I'm also approaching a point in life where I may not have to keep pushing in quite the same way.

The family I left college to support has grown. The career got built. Much of the security I spent decades trying to create is there.

I began my adult life pushing because I had to. Somewhere along the way, have to became want to. At some point, want to may have quietly become I don't know how not to.

I'm not trying to stop being ambitious. I still want to learn, travel, build things, explore ideas, have experiences, and ask questions. I hope I always do.

I'm simply becoming more interested in what's behind the wanting. Is this something I genuinely want, or am I feeding something?

That question existed before I'd ever heard the words hungry ghost. Wilson simply gave me an image for it.

Now when I think about the hungry ghost, I picture Slimer, that ridiculous green blob from Ghostbusters with the endless appetite. Always eating. Never full.

Maybe they were onto something.

I'm not interested in busting the ghost. I'm not even sure that's possible. Maybe it's enough to notice him.

That's where the pause I've been thinking about for so long fits into this for me. It's simply a little space between the hunger and automatically feeding it. Not to stop wanting, give up ambition, or analyze every decision. Just enough time to ask why.

Sometimes there will be a deeper answer. Sometimes it may simply be, Because I want to. That's okay too.

For most of my life, What's next? has been a pretty good question. I'm going to keep asking it. I just want to become better at knowing who's asking.

Me or the ghost?

Maybe we all have a hungry ghost. Maybe yours isn't ambition. Maybe it's approval, certainty, recognition, being right, being needed, or being understood. Maybe it's something you haven't noticed yet.

So perhaps the question isn't whether we should feed the ghost. Maybe it's whether we ever stop long enough to notice that we're feeding it.

Because if you're always feeding the ghost, can you ever truly know who you are?

Unscripted Mind

Always remember to JUST BREATHE!