No Attachment! No Depression!
Attachment is no more than a
safety blanket to overcome fear—fear of change and of the unknown from that
change. To cope with that fear, all attachments become distractions.
We are living in a world with many problems that confront us in our
everyday life, and many of these are not only unavoidable but also insoluble.
To overcome these daily challenges, many of us just turn to attachment as a
means of distracting ourselves from facing our problems head on, or adapting
and changing ourselves in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in
life, from anxiety to frustrations, from anger to sadness, from grief to
worry—they all stem from the same thing: our attachment to how we want
things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting and embracing whatever that
might happen after we have put forth our best effort.
Attachment is the source of human depression. No attachment, no depression!
Career
attachments
Your career may span over decades,
involving many ups and downs, such as promotion and unemployment, changes of
career and pursuits of higher qualifications, among others. They may have
become your problematic attachments.
Money
and wealth attachments
Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in
life. Attachment to money and the riches of the material world is often a
result of an inflated ego-self. You may want to keep up with the
Joneses—driving a more expensive car than your neighbors and friends.
Relationship attachments
Living has to do with people,
involving agreements and disagreements, often resulting in mixed emotional
feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and regret, among others, and they
become attachments to the ego-self as memories that you may refuse to let go
of—forgetting and forgiving, for example, are hurdles often difficult to
overcome.
Success
and failure attachments
Success in life often becomes an
attachment in the form of expectation that it will continue, bringing more
success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate disappointment and regret—an
emotional attachment often difficult to let go of.
Adversity
and prosperity attachments
In the course of human life, loss
and bereavement are as inevitable as death. Loss can be physical, material, and
even spiritual, such as loss of hope and purpose. You may want to attach to the
good old days, and refuse to let go of the current adversity. Adversity and
prosperity attachments stem from the ego-self.
Time
attachments
Time is a leveler of mankind: we
all have only 24 hours a day, no more and no less, although the lifespan of
each individual varies. Attachment to time is the reluctance to let go of time
passing away, as well as the vain attempt to fully utilize every moment of
time, leading to a compulsive mind, such as texting while driving.
Sometimes we are so busy in the
outside world that we seldom have an opportunity to look inside of ourselves,
to understand who we really are and what really makes us happy—probably not the
material things around us.
Letting go of your attachments
is the art of living well.
Stephen Lau
Copyright©
by Stephen Lau
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