I remember the word ‘covet’ securely fastening itself in my brain after I watched The Silence Of The Lambs. I had always admired the word as part of the English language, but never truly gave it the power it so richly deserved. For only having a mere five letters, the word yields much more of an impact than meets the eye. With the pun intended in that last sentence, I began to realize how it easy it could be to covet something that was so far removed from my reality, yet so much of a presence in my daily thoughts. I could always see what it was that I wanted.
Signs and portents of the things we covet will surely present themselves in a myriad of ways, and those glowing neon reminders will only serve to keep that item at the forefront of our brains. Though we may not have access to the object of our attention on a daily basis, it nonetheless plants a small seed in our brain that sprouts and grows every time we give it a moment of thought. That lingering speculation permeates the moments of our day and the spark of what could be fuels the evolution of our fascination.
By giving ourselves permission to covet, we allow ourselves the opportunity to keep our desires alive, to live with passion. And maybe if those dreams never come to fruition we were privately allowed the right to give that fantasy a breath of life, if only for a few fleeting moments. There is no legitimate way of telling our heart it was wrong. It will beat the way it wants to beat and we are powerless to its incessant drumming.
I am intimidated by the fear of not following my desires, of never having opened the door to possibility, and thus never being able to define what is truly important to me. Coveting those things, identifying the wants that truly envelop me but knowing they may be the things that I can never have, affects my world on a scale beyond my comprehension. But those impervious wants, those things I covet, allow me to begin to sketch the blueprints of what it is that I truly desire. They satiate my thirsts, they begin to quench my desire.
To covet is to wish – to wish is to dream – and to dream is to live.
