Most of us are taught that kindness means listening. We learn to be patient, understanding, and compassionate when people are struggling. We are told to give grace, offer support, and make room for difficult conversations.
Those are good lessons. Necessary lessons.
What nobody teaches us is that not every appetite should be fed.
Years ago, there was a beloved children’s book called, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”. (My favorite book btw) The premise was simple. Give the mouse a cookie and he immediately wants a glass of milk.
Who wouldn’t want milk as a kid?
Give him the milk and he wants a straw.
Who doesn’t like a good straw besides women in their 40’s and 50’s trying to avoid wrinkles around the mouth.
Give him the straw and he wants something else.
Bottom line… The requests never end because the story was never really about a cookie.
It was about the nature of endless wanting.
Some people operate the same way.
Tell them one piece of gossip and they’ll want another. Agree with one complaint and they’ll uncover three more. Entertain one grievance and they’ll arrive carrying a suitcase en route to Europe full of additional offenses. Participate in one negative conversation and suddenly you’ve been assigned a permanent role as audience, therapist, investigator, and emotional dumping ground.
The mistake many of us make is believing that if we listen long enough, agree hard enough, over explain strong enough, or participate fully enough, that eventually the conversation will run its course.
It rarely does.
Because negativity is often less interested in resolution than it is in attention because satisfaction was never the destination.
The more attention it receives, the more it expands. The more oxygen it receives, the larger it becomes. Like a camp fire that was meant to warm everyone for an evening but eventually consumes the entire forest because nobody stopped adding wood.
What’s interesting is how often this behavior disguises itself as curiosity. It doesn’t always arrive looking malicious. Sometimes it sounds like concern. Sometimes it sounds like interest. Sometimes it comes wrapped in questions that appear harmless on the surface.
The questions continue long after the answers matter because the goal was never getting information.
The goal was engagement.
There are people who become fascinated by drama, struggles, conflicts, disappointments, illnesses, and private lives of others because it provides something to consume. Other people’s lives become a form of entertainment. Every disagreement becomes an episode. Every setback becomes a plot twist. Every diagnosis becomes another thread to pull, another mystery to dissect, another conversation that refuses to reach a conclusion.
Healthy curiosity eventually reaches satisfaction. Obsession never does.
Obsession simply wants another serving. Preferably with a side of details dipped in ranch.
That is why boundaries are so often ignored by people who feed these appetites. When someone says, “I’d rather not discuss that,” most people understand. They move on. They respect the line. Others simply look for another door. They ask someone else. They revisit the topic later. They disguise intrusion as concern. They convince themselves they are helping when they are really just consuming.
The same pattern exists everywhere.
Social media has become a massive feeding ground for it. Outrage feeds outrage. Gossip feeds gossip. Comparison feeds comparison. Entire platforms are built around capturing attention and encouraging people to consume more, react more, judge more, and speculate more. Yet no amount of scrolling ever seems to satisfy the appetite. It simply creates another reason to come back tomorrow.
The same is true of people who become consumed by sickness, symptoms, and worst-case scenarios. Concern becomes fixation. Fixation becomes identity. Reassurance provides relief for a moment, but only for a moment. Soon another symptom appears, another fear emerges, another conversation begins. The appetite returns because it was never truly satiable in the first place.
Perhaps that is because feeding the beast is like trying to fill a boat with a giant hole in the bottom. No matter how much energy is poured into it, no matter how many conversations are had, no matter how much reassurance, gossip, outrage, attention, or validation is provided, it disappears through the same opening and demands more.
There is no finish line.
There is no moment when the beast finally announces it has had enough.
Because some appetites are not seeking satisfaction. They are seeking continuation.
That is why boundaries matter. Not because they are punishments, but because they prevent us from participating in cycles that never end. They allow us to distinguish between genuine concern and endless consumption, between helping and enabling, between curiosity and obsession.
At some point, wisdom requires us to stop supplying what only grows larger when fed.
Because not every hunger deserves another serving.
The truth is some things become stronger every time they are fed.
Eventually we realize that some people are merely searching for answers, while others are searching for fuel. One is trying to move forward. The other is trying to keep the conversation alive.
And that may be the simplest test of all.
If attention makes something smaller, it was probably a problem seeking a solution.
If attention makes it larger, it was probably a beast looking for its next meal.
Let’s not feed it.
That’s my Reveal.
Love,
Karin
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