A note from Second Harvest: A longtime supporter of Second Harvest, who wishes to remain anonymous, recently asked if we would share his perspective on the emotional impacts of hunger. We hope you enjoy his insightful story.
It used to be that only two English words ended in the letters -ngry. Now, thanks to the marriage of those words—hungry and angry—we have a third: the Oxford Dictionary in 2018 officially added hangry to its massive and authoritative collection of English words. (Technically, there’s also anhungry, an adjective meaning hungry, but it’s obsolete so it really doesn’t count.)
The wordsmiths at Oxford defined hangry as, “bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.” You’ve surely experienced both hunger and anger at one time or another, and maybe together. They’re similar in that we prefer not to experience either of these conditions.
But they also have one significant difference. At least to some degree, you can control or even avoid an angry response. An unidentified Japanese diplomat once said, “Never get angry. Except on purpose.” Yes, there’s such a thing as righteous anger, such as when that idiot driver cuts you off on I-90. But, as someone has said, if your justifiable response still has you steamed when you get home, the other driver has won. You can choose to set your anger aside.
By contrast, you can’t control your hunger. It’s your body telling you it’s time to top up; it needs fuel. Oh, you can override those signals, as our Muslim neighbors need to do during Ramadan, when they fast during daylight hours. People in other religious traditions also engage in fasting, deliberately refraining from food as a spiritual discipline. But Second Harvest’s concern is with those people who are hungry, or potentially hungry, through no choice of their own. And in a community like ours, where there’s plenty of food to go around, if moms and dads are unable to secure a steady supply of food for themselves and their children, they’re entitled to add anger to their hunger.
Those of us who know where our next meal is coming from today should have at least some sense of righteous anger if even one individual or family in our community doesn’t have that same assurance.
Maybe we should tinker with that Oxford definition of hangry as, “bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger,” and redefine it as our righteous anger over anyone going hungry.
Part of Second Harvest’s mission statement says, “Second Harvest brings community resources together to feed people in need through empowerment, education and partnerships.” They are thus addressing the problem of involuntary hunger. But, as a bonus, they’re also reducing the ranks of those who are hangry, however we define that.
