April 6

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

To be alive is to be hungry.

Our appetite for life is good. It keeps us reaching, growing, enjoying, and yearning to fulfill our potential. When our basic needs are satisfied, our hunger propels us to search for more elaborate gratification.

Here is where we often run into trouble. Instead of progressing through the hierarchy of needs to the spiritual level, we get stuck in an attempt to make quantity - more things, more people, and more activity - substitute for quality. And quantity alone is never enough.

It's good that we're hungry. Our appetite motivates us to feed our body in a healthy way and also to feed our mind, heart, and spirit. Our needs pyramid, and our hunger leads us beyond quantity to the quality experiences that fill our emptiness. We read, we share, we love, we pray, we listen, we accomplish, we dance, and we feast on the fullness of life.

Today, I will direct my appetite to quality experiences.