Be Prepared For The Worst: Love, Anticipated Loss, And Environmental Valuation

Abstract

Christopher W. Young. METAMORPHOSIS. 1995. Oil on board. 48" x 24". From Utah Painting and Sculpture. With permission by Gibbs-Smith Publisher. “B e P r e p a r e d f o r t h e W o r s t ”: L o v e , A n t ic ip a t e d L o s s , a n d E n v ir o n m e n t a l V a l u a t i o n S c o t t S l o v i c I live for autumn. All year long 1 have reveries of those cool beautiful days to come, and memories of Octobers past. It is the most alive, the most heartbreakingly real season in my bones. —John Nichols, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn (1982) I write as though there were no sorrow like my sorrow. — Harriet Beecher Stowe, letter to her husband (1849) “Be prepared for the worst.” “I live for autumn.” The same paradox operates in each of these expressions. What does it mean to exist in a state of readiness— to be prepared— for something, a decline or an absence, not yet experienced? How do we ever know the true delicacy of existence, the frailty of a life hanging on from breath to breath, the subtle beat of a heart just born and now dying? * September 8, 1994 “Be prepared for the worst.” I am never prepared for the worst. What I want is to hold and love and experience. To make a family and then to exist as part of it. When did the making occur? In the dark sometime— ages ago, months ago— hugging and thrusting. It all seems so vague now. Then, after sufficient gestation, this: the stain of water, the late-night drive, the waiting in the surgical prep room with the brown ball of fertility exposed. We hold hands until she is taken away for the emptying, the delivery— and then, here it is, here he is: shock of black hair, skin wrinkled and red, sprawled in the nursery for requisite measuring. I, the co-maker, am finally invited to meet the new life. The pediatrician, in his white coat, pokes and stretches, wobbles the legs like a bicycle mechanic spinning new tires, and records his numbers. There is no warmth, no love, in his touch. And I cannot yet bring myself to hold this new life so present to me. 2 3 8 WAL 3 5 . 3 FALL 2 0 0 0 * 1997 “Be prepared for the worst.” I keep on my shelf a book called Regret. That’s it— simply Regret. “Regret has little respect for rule books, eti­ quette manuals, lists of commandments, or economic models,” writes Janet Landman. “Like other emotions (as well as other psychological processes in general),” she continues, regret depends less on universal, objective assessments than on personal values and norms. Anything that one cares about or that conflicts with one’s values or falls below one’s standards may produce regret. Inasmuch as norms and values lack uni­ versality, it would be foolish to attempt to formulate universal propositions as to what is a “proper” occasion for regret.. .. The only certainty is that one of the incorrigible costs of caring about something . . . is vulnerability to the experience of regret. (168) Just think of it that way— that the cost of caring is vulnerability to regret, vulnerability to wishing things otherwise. Whatever we love, then, according to our individual attractions and concerns, makes us susceptible to doubts and second guesses. We’re caught in a web of pri­ vate dubiety. If I do this, am I sacrificing my opportunity to do that? I love to hike and I love to study; so when I hit the trail, I find myself wondering what I might be reading or writing back in my office. And when I’m inside at the computer, I dream of the mountains. When Jacinto, my ten-year-old son, is skateboarding in front of our house, I imagine he’s dreaming about the .great shows he could be watching on TV or the funny designs he could be...