INSIGHT: Is It You or Me?

Toward Transformation I: Breaking Up

Unrequited love: it’s fantastic, because it never has to change, it never has to grow up, and it never has to die!
Vince, Queer as Folk, potentially quoting a Doctor Who episode

No one else will do. Unreciprocated feelings can create a growing emotional eddy that is difficult to escape. Finding the wherewithal to recognize the deeper yearning—for intimacy and connection—and the person’s inability to meet these needs, is one of the few lifesavers that can alter the cycle. Then again, sometimes we don’t want to change. The COP21 deliberations have me considering the unrequited relationships that will need to evolve if we are going to break our addiction to the status quo and accelerate a move to a low carbon economy. On so many fronts, such as energy, transportation, or land use policy, we’re stuck hoping that, eventually, if we just try hard enough, we’ll find fulfillment in the familiar. Emotionally and financially invested, we resist acknowledging the object of desire is incapable of providing the resilient future we’re ultimately seeking. Until we find the fortitude to admit the misplacement of our desire, and begin to invest in a better way, the whirlpool has us in a grip that our wishful thinking only makes more powerful.