“I don’t care about the carbon footprint of one measly lantern,” he said. “I like it and I’m not going to get rid of it.”
“I hate that you’re so apathetic,” I said.
“You’re being ridiculous,” he said. There was a sharp, loud quality to his voice that I’d never heard before.
At that point, I uttered some sweeping generalization about privileged men and their lack of empathy, which made him furious that I was turning this into a judgment on his character, and that I had become worked up over nothing. I tried to explain in six different ways why this was important to me and why the impending collapse of the natural world should be explanation enough for why I was upset, but I was doing it with rage in my voice and it was coming out all wrong. He just kept repeating that he couldn’t understand why we were fighting over this, which made me even more frustrated that he wasn't listening.
I worried that the big issues of the world didn’t seem to affect Doug the same way that they affected me. Our political leanings were more or less aligned, and we shared similar dreams for the future, so I didn’t understand how he managed to go about his life without succumbing to the same existential dread and anger that plagued me. It was a strange space for me to navigate, envying his capacity to be content in such a flawed world while also resenting the privilege that allowed him to feel that way.
