ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with classroom work the author has undertaken using Baz Luhrmann’s film of Romeo and Juliet, asking students why they think it would be that, according to the movie’s tagline, “The greatest love story the world has ever known” is not a romance but, in fact, a tragedy. One possible response, informed by the work of Jacques Derrida, offers that it may be because every love is always already a looming tragedy: every love, one way or another, is going to end, which suggests, as John Caputo has proposed, why lovers cling so tightly to each other in the night. Love shares with mourning the impulse for the heart to hold on. The chapter explores letting go—arguing for the importance of embracing and internalizing the process of mourning, which will facilitate a crucial transformation in human beings’ self-understanding. The author draws on Jean Piaget’s notion of “accommodation” to envision a way of releasing old ideas and formulating new stories. The stories people tell themselves offer a lens through which to view themselves and their place in the world. As ecological crisis looms, it is especially important that people bid farewell to the old narratives and begin to accommodate new ones.
