Purpose sharpens beauty—a truth that cuts against our comfortable notion that grace belongs only to leisure and ease. Rumi isn't simply saying that hunger makes the lion fierce; he's suggesting that creatures (and by extension, we ourselves) are most alive, most genuinely beautiful, when animated by genuine need rather than satisfied complacency. Watch someone absorbed in work they actually care about, and you'll recognize that particular radiance Rumi describes—not the polished beauty of repose, but the authentic handsomeness of someone fully engaged in something that matters. There's an old dignity in that.