Attachment is basically your emotional dependence on
things and people that define your identity, around which you wrap your so
called “happiness” and even your survival. Attachment is holding on to
anything that you are unwilling to let go of, whether it is something
positive or negative.
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 miseries. Worse,
attachment may come in many different forms that we are unaware of.
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. In
the past, people could enjoy the blessings of life without spending too
much real money. Nowadays, to many people, enjoyment of life
requires money—and lots of it—and you may be one of them.
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 and over-doing.
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. Imagine you are all alone in a room with nothing, except a pen and a
piece of paper. Surprisingly, you may become creative and even happy,
with nothing there to worry about, and nothing there to distract your mind.
Are you unhappy because of some of your attachments to
the above? The only antidote to your unhappiness is letting go of all your
attachments to the material world you are living in. Understandably, letting go
is never easy. That said, nothing is impossible if there is a will.
Read my book: The Wisdom of Letting Go.
Find out how and why human attachments are obstacles to living a life of
balance and happiness. Get the wisdom to let go of your emotional and material
attachments in order to live as
if everything is a miracle.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
