Potpourri | Sara Jaramillo Klinkert - I want more things!
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Nov. 11, 2025
This month, I am honored to share a potent reflection originally written in Spanish by the journalist Sara Jaramillo Klinkert, who gave me permission to translate and share her article for this circle.
The paradox of our time is that we own much, but we often belong to what we own. It’s important to think about the 'monsters' we create—those cycles of desire where the complement of the complement always demands another link.
This isn't just a personal habit; it is a societal spell woven into our very skin. We have forgotten the art of 'nothing more.' In the medicine way, we know that true power doesn't come from the fire that demands more wood, but from the stillness of the witness.
In this edition of Medicine Woman Speaks Newsletter, we look at the 'Perfect Dolls' in our lives and the bravery it takes to stop the chain. It is time to stop being a slave to our own creations and remember what it’s like to live outside the hunger.
Every time one of us chooses 'nothing more' over 'one more thing,' the monster loses its grip on our collective soul. Inner peace is the seed from which global peace grows. One by one, we quiet the hunger; one by one, we bring world peace.
By Sara Jaramillo Klinkert
It has almost certainly happened to you. You think you need something, and as soon as you get it, you realize that thing needs something else to complement it.
And you haven’t even finished complementing it when you feel that the complement needs a complement of its own. Of course, the complement of the complement will need another, which always needs yet another. And so it goes, on and on. Only you can break the chain, but you don’t, because there is as much satisfaction in desiring something as there is in obtaining it, and you don’t want to stop being satisfied. You look back and realize the chain is so long that you no longer remember what it’s like to live outside of it.
A short while ago, I read a novel by Michael Ende about an orphaned girl named Momo. One day, a man gives her a talking doll. “I am the perfect doll,” it says. “I belong to you,” it says. “I want to have more things,” it says. Momo tries to get a different dialogue out of it; she changes her questions and proposes games, but the doll wouldn't stop saying the same things. “I am the perfect doll.” “I belong to you.” “I want to have more things.”
In this way, the girl experiences a feeling she has never had before: the feeling of boredom. She understands that it is impossible to reach an understanding with someone who does not know how to listen. The man, seeing her bored, gives her accessories for the doll, and then gives her another doll, telling her it is a companion for the first one. He tells her there are also endless accessories for that one, and if she gets bored, there are other dolls who are friends of the first ones—dolls that are forever "wanting" things that she could provide.
The girl suspects there is something monstrous in accepting it: she desires the doll, but she does not want the doll to "desire." She just wants to play peacefully with it. Nothing more.
I am convinced that we each create our own monsters. I have a few of my own whom I still feed with the same devotion I use to feed my dogs. When the only goal is accumulation, you might not have goals at all, but rather hungry monsters. You could be a slave to your own creation without even knowing it.
Perhaps you have read enough stories to know that monsters are ready to devour anything in their path. Here lies the paradox: they belong to you because you created them, but by being unable to pull away, you end up belonging to them.
Every now and then, I think of Momo so I don't forget not to lower my guard; to remember that there are dolls everywhere hiding the first link of an infinite chain behind an innocent facade. I tell myself I don’t need anything: I don’t want to have more things, I don’t want to keep feeding any monsters.
It is cold, and I light the fireplace. There is something hypnotic about
contemplating the fire, and that is when I understand the trap: if I want more fire, I have to throw more wood onto it, but the wood is never enough. I don’t want to be the fire, and I don’t want to be the wood; I just want to be the one sitting quietly on the sofa, watching the flames go out.
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