The Appetite

What It Actually Is

Something in you keeps the mouth busy — food, a drink, a tab, a show you are no longer watching. It rarely announces itself as hunger; it arrives as the sense that the evening is not quite finished yet. The Appetite is not about weakness or size, it is about the small, reliable comfort of consuming a little more than you meant to.

How You'd Recognise It

• — You eat the last of something standing up, so it doesn't count
• — The plan was one episode and the plan was never one episode
• — You order food within ten minutes of a day going badly
• — You finish a snack and can't recall the middle of it

Set Against It

Every thought has a virtue that answers it rather than fights it. For this one, that is Temperance (enkrateia).