Fire with Fire

I was re-considering the stories I tell yesterday morning, looking for clusters and/or lines of thematic connections between them and saw patterns of arrogance or gluttony, self-interest, and finally hit upon an expanded consideration of greed. And so, I discovered the Latin “avaritia” from “avere”—“crave, long for”; as well as Saxon and Anglican and Scandanavian variants—those old northern tribes all certainly knew the power of the feeling—“gredig,” “gradag,” “graadig,” “gretig,” “gratag”—word after word denoting a cluster of “covetous[ness]” or “voracious[ness]” springing from “hunger” and “eagerly.” And I thought of all the things we become “greedy” for and how our own destructive hungers can eat us from within. Maybe the more we consume, the further removed we become from that which we truly crave. Then last night, I learned of the premature death of that supremely talented Amy Winehouse, and I became deeply saddened by news of the greedy, voracious monster that turned and devoured her. One of my dearest friends is a psych nurse, and she told me that one basic way to overcome an addiction is for the addicted to find just one alternative that he or she can crave more than the monster. Fight fire with fire, so to speak.