At a different time in my life, I would have looked at this painting with a tinge of shame. I would have thought to myself, Wanting more? You have enough. Everything is enough. Be grateful. Stop searching. Let it flow. Yet, at other times, I realize I am not so evolved. I still want more.

And who doesn’t? Is wanting more a bad thing?

Perhaps it can be—not because of the desire itself, because of how we try to meet it.

After reflecting, I realized that the reason wanting more felt painful was because it was connected to the notion that I did not have what I needed within me. In other words, if wanting more means we are not enough, we might seek to fill his need from external sources—to find only cold, fleeting comfort.

Have a desire for connection? You turn on social media and see who has liked you. A desire to feel simply okay? You work. Or you eat. A desire to feel free? You go on trip after trip after trip.

I’ve done all of the above. And this way of reaching for more led me to feel empty, which happens to be the exact opposite of more.

How, then, did I come to the conclusion that wanting more is an excellent thing?

It can be—if, and only if, we satisfy our need more from within. If, and only if, it is guided by the sense that we are already enough.

Have a desire for a connection? Find out more about yourself. A desire to feel content? Tune in to your natural ability to heal yourself. Desire freedom? Do something that is true to you and your deepest desires—whether that be singing at the top of your lungs or telling someone to f*ck off.

I would eat to feel like I could handle stress. Or work to feel that I was a good, competent person. It turns out no amount of food or work can achieve that. And actually, it can counteract it in the end. (Hello work stress, hello unhealthy work environments, hello overeating. None of which engenders feelings of contentment, goodness, or competence, btw.) I would scroll Twitter to find someone who could relate to how I was feeling without even really reflecting or processing how I was feeling first.

And this isn’t to say that I’ve stopped doing all of those things with my new understanding. I still do, sometimes. We consume like we yawn. We’ve been taught that way, after all.

But I’m beginning to satisfy this need for more in a way that brings me closer to—rather than away from—myself. If wanting more stems from or is coupled with a feeling of not being enough, then the need for more will grow and become vacuous, unknowable, forever in thirst.

If wanting more allows us to tap more into something internal, I believe that’s when a shift can occur. Space can clear. That’s when we can see the true need underlying the surface-level need. It’s something that cannot be sold and bought, something that will never run out.

In Buddhism, this desire for more relates to one of three personality types—the  “greedy” type, often characterized by wanting more.

As with many personality assessments, I don’t believe they’re helpful in the sense that people do not fit into a one-size-fits-all way of being. And I’m not going so far as to say, “greed is good.”

But I will say this:

For those who hunger, who want more, perhaps many wonderful things can happen when we fill that need from within.

Perhaps our capacity for more will not be shot haphazardly into an open field, will not be sold to the highest bidder, will not be charged by the energy of a pixelated screen. Which, by the way, only exists because of the people who are creating all manner of things online consider the screen the source when they are actually the source. And if we realized the true source, maybe we would rely less on the thing that only reflects the source back to us. You know?

I’m not just talking about art. I’m also talking about the self-reflection that makes healthy community possible, that makes activism possible, that makes deep and sustainable well-being possible.

Am I there yet? Absolutely not. But the me who made that painting to express the feeling of wanting more—before signing into Amazon, popping into Twitter, or scrolling through Seamless—definitely was.

And how funny to think, that in those beautiful moments of looking within and searching for something that felt true, I did not know I was enough.