"I'm So Hungry I Could Eat A Horse!"

Has anyone actually ever followed through on that and eaten a horse. I am talking a full-sized horse, not any of those pint-sized ponies that people keep in their house and end up needing an intervention from their friends because of. I don't think being a Cowboy in 1883 and being forced to eat your trusty stead because you got lost on the trail and ran out of food counts either. Same for the Donner Party. Which always troubled me, now that I think of it: did they NOT eat their Horses before they started eating each other?

Dog food doesn't count either. I don't care how tasty it is! We are talking Filet of Secretariat here.

Funny how cows and horses are about the same size and we actually eat cows---unless you are from India, then you allow them to piss and shit on your front lawn (do they have "lawn" in India ) and eat rice with your hands---but no one ever says, "I am so hungry I could eat a Cow!" I mean, it is not like a Cow is to a Horse as a Mouse is to an Elephant.

This is where you interject and inform me that it is not meant to be taken literally and is just a figure of speech. It is not meant to mean that someone is actually going to eat a whole Horse---even if they could.... or wanted to. It is just someone saying they are really, really hunger and have a monstrous appetite. Kind of like when a guy without the assistance of an erectile dysfunction says he is going to make passionate love all night long. He doesn't really mean that he can. Anymore than he ate a Horse 2 hours earlier when he was "stah-ving!"

That is the peculiar thing about desire and how relative it is. Before the desire is fulfilled---while it looms on the horizon like an oasis in the desert---that desire feels larger than life. I really think I could eat a Horse, and I really could play Mailman all night long without being assisted by any pills or powders. That is how it FEELS in the moment. The desire feels massive and ravenous.... all-consuming. The proverbial eyes are bigger than the stomach is.

We are not lying either when we say how we feel in that moment. We are giving shape and substance to our subjective feelings. Our desire is all-consuming. That is how it feels. The irony, though, is that our capacity to hold and contain the objects of our desire is not as big. The willingness of our desire---the desire of our desire---is greater, in many instances than is our capacity for our desire.

Is that a little too philosophical? Perhaps. It need not be, though. I am sure any one of us can find immediate and direct examples from our own lives where our willingness led us to overestimating our capacity. It happens in love and relationships all the time. We don't need to just be talking about eating Horses here. That person who has the willingness to be faithful in marriage may not have the capacity to do so. Their desire is true and legitimate while their capacity to enact that desire is limited.

The same can be said for the person who is suffering with an addiction: one can have the desire for sobriety, and overcoming the abuse of a particular substance, while not having the capacity to actually do so. They may not be lying. They may not be dishonest. The lover who wants and craves you passionately---in the moment of intense passion---can be honest about their passionate desire to have you forever, while not being capable of actually doing that forever. The willingness is real. So are the limits of our capacity; and oftentimes the nature of all-consuming desire is such that it distorts our own perception of ourselves and the reality of what we are capable of. The result is that we overestimate how hungry we actually are.
 

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse, but I'll just settle for a burger.