How is Attachment Persistent?
Attachment is surprisingly persistent.
What is attachment? Attachment is how we as human beings latch onto things. We become attached to our “people”, or jobs, our cars, our educations…and inevitably our identities themselves.
The problem comes from being attached to a specific identity. If you are happy with who you are, here and now, then it’s not a big deal.
If, however, you are seeking to make changes, then being attached to the identity you have for yourself in the present moment makes change something of a challenge.
Just to complicate this idea a little more, attachment tends to sneak up on you. Before you know it, you’ve latched onto a thing, and an unhealthy attachment has formed.
But, you might argue, it’s good to have people, jobs, things, and identities to be attached to. This is where it is imperative to define attachment versus connection. Having a connection to things is looser and easier to disconnect from, when change happens. Attachment, however, is a tight grip that is hard to release.
Let’s acknowledge a certain Universal Truth many people have a difficult time with. EVERYTHING CHANGES. Period. Absolutely everything changes.
Most change we have little to no control over. The weather, other people’s moods, traffic conditions, etcetera. The sun rises and it sets every single day, and each and every day presents changes, sometimes subtle and sometimes much less so.
But there is and will be change. Lots of it. Constantly.
For a lot of people, this is not something they can easily accept. To some degree, because of this, they develop attachments in order to maintain constancy. These people, this job, my car, my education, and who I am are set in stone. As such, they will not change, and that’s how I maintain sanity.
Attachment will not prevent change.
Because everything can and will change, all of these things we become attached to change. People come and go, sometimes by choice and sometimes not. Jobs are won and lost. Cars break down. You can and likely will learn something new every day.
Most importantly, you and I change with every day and every experience. Yet because of human nature being what it is, we get attached to our identities as being what they are. This is who I am, and because of that it is not easy for me to change my life.
This is the biggest lie there is.
Who I am right here and right now is the product of my thoughts, feelings, and actions in the past. Some aspects of this go back decades, while others go back hours. In the now, this version of my identity is the product of my past.
Which means that frequently we become attached to the past. How we identify ourselves is based upon old, outdated information.
This may feel like a roundabout, infinite loop. How can you identify yourself differently? This is, on the surface, actually very simple, but paradoxically something of a challenge. I can identify myself differently by acknowledging that everything changes, and by looking at who I want to become and seeing myself in that way now.
This is where the paradox comes into play. Pathwalking is about choosing to live life on your own terms, rather than let life live you. Because who I am now is the product of past thoughts, feelings and actions, in order to take control over the changes I want to make, I need to see myself in the ideal, in the here-and-now. I need to change the angle of perspective for how I view myself.
Letting go of attachment is very freeing.
I believe that the attachments we develop are a product of resistance to change. While the majority of change is completely out of our control, when it comes to ourselves, the opposite is true. You and I alone can change ourselves. Nobody but us is thusly empowered.
Consciousness creates reality. In order to be who I truly wish to be, I need to be aware of my attachments, and how persistent they are, and LET THEM GO. In particular, the attachments I hold for who I believe myself to be.
Lastly, there is one more truth I need to acknowledge. This is a Universal Truth. The ONLY thing I can change is directly related to myself. Where I am, who I am, how I am, what I am are the only things I can directly change. As such, if I want to have a greater impact on the world at large, I need to take charge of changing myself first.
I am working through another deep thinker’s material, and it showed me that I am attached to more things in life than I realized. Further, it revealed to me that those attachments are, in fact, unhealthy. To truly become who I want to be, I need to release those things and strive to focus on right here, right now.
Every day is a new day. Change happens every single day. I will embrace this rather than resist it.
As always, thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me.
This is the seventy-ninth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series. My collectively published writing can be found here.
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