What is a Phoenix but Endless Hot Wings in Fact?

This is probably not about The Lion King.

I only say “probably” because I cannot predict the direction of hunger, and hunger has a way of pulling you sideways when you were convinced you were walking straight. Think of it as being lured by the smell of a street vendor’s grill. One moment you’re telling yourself that you’re too full, and the next, you’re queuing with a fistful of coins, insisting to anyone who asks that you were only “just curious.” Gluttony is the sin of just being curious.

Let me confess something small and unheroic. My great downfall, the most consistent act of self-sabotage in my adult life this year, is the breakfast sandwich. Bacon, egg, a layer of cheese that always tastes half synthetic, sometimes a hash brown if I’m particularly doomed. The problem is not in the sandwich itself, but in my absolute inability to stop at one. Gluttony is repetition disguised as novelty. Each sandwich looks like the last, but I convince myself the next will solve something the previous failed to address. I’m not really eating food, I’m consuming the idea of satisfaction, over and over again, until my stomach is heavy and my mouth still wants.

Of course, food is only the training ground guided by the unnamed energy inside me. Once you master the art of wanting more breakfast sandwich than your arteries signed up for, you start expanding into other realms. Take television. Binge culture isn’t so much culture as an endurance sport. The first time I watched an entire series in two days, I called it indulgence. The fifth time, I called it research. The tenth time, I was honest enough to admit I didn’t care if the plot made sense, I just needed something in my eyes. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? How often we confuse watching with living? Somewhere inside me lives a small, persistent Victorian child who looks up from my glowing laptop screen and says, “You’ve been at this for hours. Haven’t you got anything better to do?,” and I pat his ghostly head and whisper, “No, darling. There’s another season.”

It’s strange, really, because we like to imagine gluttony as a body issue. Overeating, overdrinking, stuffing ourselves until the seams strain. But most of my overindulgence has nothing to do with my stomach. It’s my eyes, my ears, my scrolling thumb. I devour tweets until they blur into static, as if the next one will finally be the revelation. I chew through entire timelines of strangers. Bite, bite. Tear, tear. This is not food, but the brain does not always know the difference.

When I was a child, the first time I watched The Lion King, I cried when Mufasa died. This is not special. Millions of children did. What was special, at least to me, was how quickly I demanded to watch it again. The movie was rewound so many times the little silver disk inside the DVD player began to squeal in protest. What was I looking for exactly? Did I think the outcome would change if I consumed it again, if I gave myself up to it enough times? Hunger, like grief, is repetitive. It gnaws in cycles. And gluttony, in the end, is the arrogance of thinking that if you press replay hard enough, the lion lives. If I were to put it on again, will it live this year?

But let me not stray too far into the tragic. There is comedy in hunger. Take the phoenix. Great symbol of rebirth, transcendence, eternal fire, happy new year. But what is a phoenix if not just endless hot wings in fact? Who decided the bird should be glorious and not delicious? I’m not saying I’d eat a phoenix, but if one landed on my windowsill glowing like a barbecue, I can’t swear I wouldn’t at least taste. It would be crispy. Don’t pretend you don’t agree.

There is something so human about turning every myth into a menu item. The gods eat ambrosia, we get takeaways. The phoenix burns eternal, we burn our mouths on the first bite because we’re too impatient to wait. It’s why we have competitive eating shows, why supermarket shelves look like theme parks, why fast fashion churns out clothes designed to unravel in the wash. We are greedy not for the thing itself but for the feeling of purchase, the spectacle of it, the proof that we can have it. The second it is ours, we are already reaching for the next.

And then comes the capitalist twist, the real sin of the year in the modern world. It isn’t overweight people with turkey legs anymore, it’s waste. It’s buying expensive skincare only to throw it out half-used when a shinier bottle appears on Instagram. It’s piling your cart with avocado toast kits and forgetting them in the fridge until they turn brown. It’s influencers treating unboxings like communion. It’s the landfill that grows while we chase the next small thrill. The comedy is that we tell ourselves this is self-expression. The tragedy is that it’s just appetite with a marketing budget.

I don’t stand outside of this with my arms folded like a moral superior. I am in it, neck-deep, floating on plastic waste like the rest. I have bought jumpers I never wore, half-read books I’ll never finish, gadgets that died before their warranty. Sometimes I picture overindulgence as a smiling devil, but she’s wearing an H&M blazer and has free shipping on returns.

Here’s the thing no one tells you about excess — it doesn’t feel excessive when you’re doing it. It feels like catching up. Everyone else is watching that show, eating at that restaurant, wearing that brand, so you reach and reach and it feels like survival, like proof you exist. Only later, when you open the fridge and find three half-eaten breakfast sandwiches wrapped in foil, do you realise you mistook hunger for identity.

And yet, I can’t hate it entirely. There is something thrilling in indulgence, something almost holy. When you’re starving, truly starving, for food or for love or for distraction, every bite feels like salvation. Starvation is the best seasoning. Even when the course is not food at all. When I’ve been starved for company and finally sit in a crowded bar, it doesn’t matter what anyone says, I gulp every word like it’s wine. When I’ve gone weeks without a book, the first page I open is better than scripture. Excess is ugly, but the relief of ending lack is the most beautiful thing I know.

So maybe gluttony isn’t simply sin. Maybe it’s confession. The breakfast sandwiches are not about hunger, the binge-watch not about entertainment, the phoenix not about myth. They are about saying: I was empty and I was afraid of it. I filled myself because I could not face the hollow. The trouble, of course, is that the hollow always returns, and so the sandwich, the series, the shopping, repeat like a chorus you cannot get out of your head.

The funny thing is, I don’t even believe in moderation. They tell you moderation is key, but what is moderation if not another kind of hunger? Half a sandwich leaves you hungry, one episode unfinished leaves you restless, half a truth is a lie. If I am to indulge, I would rather plunge in headfirst, teeth-first, let the grease stain my fingers and the hours blur. Constant pain can only be fought with constant indulgence. At least when I’m full, I know for a brief moment I have won.

And maybe that’s why I like to imagine the phoenix, wings charred and crisp, waiting to be devoured. There is no moderation in myth. The bird burns, dies, returns, again and again. Even eternity is a binge cycle. The lion dies every time and still we press play. The sandwich is disappointing every time and still I queue again. I do not know how to be satisfied, but I am intimately skilled at being full.

I am not offering a solution. This is not a health guide, not a sermon. This is simply to say that gluttony, for all its teeth, is not monstrous in the way we pretend. It is ridiculous, comic, tender. It is bingeing box sets and filling online baskets and crying at cartoons until the DVD player squeals. It is eating until you’re ill and still eyeing dessert. It is wanting more from life than life ever promised to give.

And if that is sin, then I will sin again tomorrow. With a breakfast sandwich in hand, with a phoenix on the menu, with the smug certainty that if Mufasa falls one more time, perhaps this time he will stand back up.