Another human, alone, cannot possibly provide all the otherness we need to feel loved.

 

"The human body knows that it needs a multiplicity of relationships with the whole of its surroundings.  Our bodies have co-evolved with all these other fleshly forms, all of these other bodies – with cedar trees and salmon and windstorms and moon and sun, with critters and plants and herbs of every shape and size . . . [But] we [so often] believe that the only place we can encounter otherness is in another human being.  And so our bodies turn toward our human partners, demanding the sustenance that can only come from a full range of relationships.  But another human, alone, cannot possibly provide all that otherness, and the strain rapidly shatters so many marriages and partnerships."

David Abram, ecological philosopher

Photo: Rosy Paintbrush and other wildflowers, Silver Creek Basin, Maroon Bells - Snowmass Wilderness, CO, August 13, 2011