A Hunger Without a Name

Jacob has everything — and inside there is emptiness. This happens to people who from childhood are loved not for who they are but for how they look and how they win. Admiration is not closeness: it feeds the image, not the person. That is why “satisfaction doesn’t satisfy” — applause reaches the mask and never the one wearing it.

Such emptiness looks for strong stimuli: resistance, risk, other people’s emotions — anything against which one can feel alive. Jacob’s attention to Simon begins exactly here: next to him the emptiness recedes. The danger is that a person who cannot tell his own feelings apart calls all of this “irritation” — and honestly believes himself.