288. "Covet."

Oh how our religious leaders have worked to get us to keep our hands off of other people's goods.  To keep our minds off of them.  Don't even think about your neighbor's house or wife or servants or animals.  That's "coveting," a sin.

Oh how their interpreters have worked to expand our understanding of coveting.  It's a prelude to theft, even murder (Maimonides), it's the source of international strife, generating "naval battles and military expeditions" (Philo Judaeus), it's a denial of God's ability to provide (Ibn Ezra), it's a kind of idolatry (Paul), it's a form of concupiscence (Catechism of the Catholic Church), it tells the morally proud that even though they have not broken any of the outward commandments, there is an inner one (Luther), and it's evidence of uncontrolled depravity (Calvin).

So there was a lot of religion hanging on that word as it moved into our time, and became, in general use, just another word for extreme desire, like "craving," "yearning," etc.  There was that stamp given by the King James Bible ("Thou shalt not covet"), so hard to rub off.

Now comes Kate Bolick in the latest NYT Book Review, "covetous" of a man's "posture and tone."  The man is Geoff Dyer, and he writes of "the decision not to have kids" (the subject of the book Bolick is reviewing) with a "breezy, brainy insouciance."  Bolick, "an ambivalently childless woman who's still in the 'totally confused' portion of the spectrum," doesn't "yearn for" Dyer's insouciance, she "covets" it. 

"Covet."  What do you feel in that word that you don't feel in "yearn"?  Do you feel the shreds of religion hanging on it?  Is it a religion you have abandoned?  Do you feel them nevertheless?  Are you glad for them?

I'm glad for that sense of sin in it.  It tells me so much about Kate, so much to admire, and emulate, and, yes, covet.  She's not one to just yearn for a man's intellectual ease.  Not in this case.  Not with that womb inside her.  Not with all the biological and psychological unknowns that lie ahead for her, that lie in wait for her, as they do not for him. 

What does a woman sin against when she wants things foreign to her nature?  (Yes, Simone, she's got a nature, nailed down by that womb.)  The scheme of things?  Nature itself?  Or just good sense?  It's dumb not to acknowledge what you can't change, and face it, and, if it's something that can smolder in your chemistry, even fear it.  Certainly not shrug your shoulders at it, as those the lexicographers look at to illustrate "insouciance" do.  That's a sin against self-knowing, a sin against Socrates.  You want that shrug?  That's covetousness.  What kind of unexamined life are you living, girl?

That's not the life Kate Bolick is going to live, and she knows it, and we know she knows it — because she chose the word "covet."  "Covet."  There it is, with its suggestion of sin and guilt, a glimpse of a mountain, an echo of God's voice.

Isn't it great that this word was available to her?  Aren't we glad we have a language, and have, or had, a religion, that can supply such words?