What’s the difference between craving and yearning, you ask. If you look these two words up, the dictionary says they are synonyms and share a list of other synonyms in common — appetite, desire, longing, to name a few. But they don’t mean the same thing to me.
To me, a craving is an intense need that begs to be filled as soon as possible. I crave salt, mojitos, electronics. We crave what we’re told we gotta have by the marketing gurus, what we need to fill an empty space inside of ourselves that’s screaming for attention. If we don’t get what they tell us we want, we are hungry. We feel inadequate.
A yearning, on the other hand, is not directed towards our own material insufficiency. It points towards a vision of what might be, an imagining of a better place, a better way. A yearning, the dictionary notes, is tender. We yearn for justice, for peace. You can’t buy these things. You can only do the best you can to make them happen. When we experience craving, we feel like we need a fix. When we experience yearning, we recognize that there are conditions in the world that need to be fixed.
Keeping us focused on craving is a proven way to distract us from yearning. In this light, I’m increasingly aware of a form of pornography that’s not about sexuality. It’s about wealth. The media serves up a vision of something shiny that exists in a faraway fantasy universe. You know you can’t have it, but you can’t stop looking at it. So, for example, the Sunday New York Times included a special glossy section on travel recently that featured an article about the Alpine resort town, Gstaad. It suckered me in. I do not ski. I do not own clothes that one could wear après ski. Still, I was mesmerized by the description of the noble fight being waged by Old Gstaad against New Money, often represented by Russian oligarchs. Speaking of the established rich, the article says “they talk about Russians the way people used to talk about Jews in Darien, Conn.”
As much as I hate to admit it, I have a naive streak. I find myself wondering why The New York Times is publishing this diamond-encrusted slime. I understand that the people who own the Times represent an elite. But, still, given the alternatives, the paper generally takes more or less progressive positions in its news and editorial pages. It does not seem to be openly advancing the class interests of the people who winter in Gstaad and, clearly, the article is not intended to advertise this destination to people like you and me. We’re not wanted.
I consult my husband who calmly explains that the Times is in the business of selling newspapers and people just get off on reading this stuff. The more we gawk at $2,000 handbags, the less mental space we have for thinking about people who don’t have anything to put in a handbag. It’s an addiction and I’m looking for treatment options. I open the newspaper and I see the Patek Philippe and Bulgari ads cheek by jowl with the articles about homelessness. I despair. Right now, in an effort to withdraw from the wealth porn, I find myself reading a lot of science. This week, there was an article on Quantum Entanglement. I didn’t understand it, but it soothed me.
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Susie Kaufman is a retired Hospice chaplain. Her spiritual writing has appeared in America, Lilith, and Presence magazines. She is a regular at the IWOW open mic at Deb Koffman’s studio in Housatonic and has read her work several times during the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. Her story “The Edge of Elsewhere” will be published in the Festival anthology, Writing Fire. She is working on a novel entitled “Otherwise.”
The weekly EDGE WISE column is curated by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., associate professor of comparative literature, gender studies and media studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and the Founding Director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. Women writers interested in publishing in EDGE WISE can find writers’ guidelines on the Festival website, or may submit queries or columns to Jennifer@berkshirewomenwriters.org.
