Many years ago I was listening to a recording ¹ by Alan Watts and he briefly mentioned Preta or The Hungry Ghost:

Hungry or frustrated spirits who have enormous stomachs but mouths only the size of needles, a vast appetite and no means of fulfillment. And this is the manu, the world, that is to say the world of man.

It’s a vision that flashes in my mind: a grotesque hunger, a need to consume, desperate and never fulfilled, haunted.

I see us falling into that kind of desperate hunger, sated just barely as we try to suck sustanance through a narrow straw. And we’re so hungry, the straw is the only satisfaction we get, and as frustrating as the straw is, it’s still the only small satisfaction we can find. We suck desperately to get this small nourishment, but the harder we try the more the straw collapses. It seems obsessive, and we tell ourselves and we tell each other that we need to STOP OUR ADDICTION TO THE STRAW. But we aren’t addicted, we are hungry. Abstinance will not save us. To be free we must drink deeply, we must satisfy our hunger. The desire is not wrong. But the straw is our joy and our curse.

This is how I feel about our phones and social media: they are the narrow straw by which we feed. They give us just enough nourishment to become the focus of our hunger, and yet never satisfy. Our hunger for stimulation, affection, relaxation, for understanding our place in the world and who we are.

I don’t have an answer, but I am open to the idea that we must go through instead of away. That we must find a way to drink deeply before we try to cast away the straw.