Hunger Will Show You Who You Really Are

Hunger Will Show You Who You Really Are

By Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

Hunger’s a tricky thing it doesn’t always show up with a rumbling belly. Sometimes it slips in quiet, like an ache you can’t name. You think you know yourself your limits, your strength, what you’d do or never do but hunger? Real hunger? It rewrites the whole script.

And I’m not just talkin’ about missing lunch. I mean the kind of hunger that crawls into your chest and makes a bed there. The hunger for meaning, for affection, for clarity. The hunger that makes your stomach feel like it’s got knots tied in it and your spirit feel like it’s been left out in the cold.

I’ve known all kinds. That empty fridge type? Yep. That deep soul-thirst type? Lived it. That “why am I even here” kind? Camped out in it longer than I’d like to admit.

Now listen when you’re comfy and full, you walk different. You talk different. You even pray different. Your prayers sound all polished and polite. But let hunger show up? You drop the manners. You don’t ask for blessings you beg for breakthroughs. You cry out from somewhere raw, a place even you didn’t know existed.

Let me paint you a picture. I was maybe nine years old, caught in a standoff with my cousin over the last piece of  Celestine’s sweet potato pie. Now that woman God rest her soul made a pie so smooth and creamy it could hush a room. Anyway, both of us locked eyes over that slice like it was the last bar of gold on Earth. We weren’t fighting over food we were fighting over comfort, over love, over one last bite of “everything’s gonna be alright.”

Granny didn’t even raise her voice. She just gave us that look the kind of look that don’t need no words, the kind that echoes through generations. Then she said, real calm, “Baby, you ain’t hungry. Not really. You just greedy for sweetness.”

She went on to tell us about growing up when dinner was cornbread and a prayer. Said she saw grown men cry not from pain, but from pure, bone-deep need. “You wanna understand life?” she asked. “Go without for a while. You’ll learn.”

That day stuck to me like sugar on a warm biscuit. Because what she meant was, true hunger doesn’t just growl in your gut. It hollers from your soul.

Fast forward a few years I’m standing in my tiny kitchen, fresh off losing a job, some friends, and all sense of direction. I open the fridge hoping something’s changed since five minutes ago. Nah. Still just mustard and an old jug of tap water. Fancy, right? And I remember thinking, Dang… is this where I’m at now?

But instead of crying, I heard my granny's voice again: “Sometimes God lets you go hungry so you’ll sit down long enough to get fed right.”

So I sat. Right there on the floor. Me, the mustard bottle, and a big ol’ helping of reality. And wouldn’t you know it, in that stillness, I felt something crack open in me. Not sadness something better. Gratitude. Not the cheesy kind you force. I mean real, gritty, “thank you for something” kind of thanks.

Because hunger ain’t just about food. It’s about fire. It burns off all the junk that don’t matter burns off ego, pride, comfort. It shows you who you are when nobody’s lookin’. And it shows you who the Creator is when nobody else answers.

See, when I was full of myself, of comfort, of distraction I prayed soft, shallow prayers. But when I was empty? When my bones ached and my eyes stayed heavy? That’s when I really started talking to God. Not with fancy words. With groans. With silence. With realness.

Hunger don’t lie. It don’t dress things up. It grabs you by the soul and says, “Let’s talk for real.”

Celestine always said, “A hungry man will tell you the truth. A full man’ll just smile and nod.”

So now? I bless hunger. I do. Not just the kind that makes you raid the fridge at midnight, but the kind that makes you look at your life and say, There’s got to be more.

Because that “more” is where growth lives. That “more” is where you meet your deeper self. That “more” is where you stop pretending and start becoming.

And once you’ve tasted that kind of hunger the soul kind you’ll never settle for crumbs again.