Attachment

So I kind of had to throw some theory in my last post “Human Things” to talk about what I want to talk about next. In general, my intent is to always talk from an experiential perspective, it’s just that my experience is highly informed by stinking thinking! So to give insight into what I grapple with requires sharing what I am thinking about from time to time. I think (see???) what I am going to do is label posts that are strictly theoretical with a “Rated T” at the top. That way you know what you are in for and can either skip it or more easily refer back to it later. It’s also my intent to keep theoretical posts well spread out so as not to overwhelm.

O.K., now about attachment. Let me just be blunt. I love attachment! I mean I get attached. If you think I was attached to that umbrella, do I have some stories for you! Take my shoes for instance. Anyone who knows me well knows how I love my shoes. Yet I’m not one of those people with a closet full of shoes. Oh no. I only need my favorites. My normal rotation at the moment includes 3 pairs of dress shoes and 1 pair of casual sneakers. Yes, I have other shoes in both categories, but I only ever wear the ones that I am attached to (aka, my favorites). And I will wear them until they are worn out. It’s not that I don’t want new ones, it’s that having to retire one of my favorite things makes me so sad. And frankly, I am a creature of habit so I am pretty much only going to have 3-4 shoes in my rotation at a time. That means adding new ones necessitates letting go of old ones.

You think I’m weird, don’t you? How about cars then? I know a lot of people get attached to their cars. I sure do. My current car is a sporty red 4 door Mini. It has a name. Of course it has a name. Bernie is the fastest car (by far) that I have ever owned. And I love it. That said, my previous car was a silver Matrix named Myles. If you have known me for any amount of time you probably rode in Myles at some point. I drove Myles for 13 years and over 200,000 miles. Myles took me all over Texas coaching hockey. Myles transported my kids, my dogs, my coworkers, my friends and at least half of the 2006 Women’s U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey Team (not all at once, mind you). Myles saved my life twice. The first of those two incidents I thought was for sure the end of Myles, but a major surgery later and he was right back on the road. When I finally had to retire Myles a few years ago, it was- and I am not at all exaggerating- excruciating. I was super excited about Bernie, but that didn’t matter. When I handed over the keys the car sales woman could tell I was about to lose it and uttered this big sympathetic “aaaaaaw” as if I was the most pathetic little thing she had ever encountered.

Not a car person either? O.K., how about places? Like, say, my childhood room for instance. We moved into the home that my parents still live in when I was 5 years old. At some point early on my mom let us each pick what color we wanted to paint our room, so long as we painted it with her. I picked the brightest kelly green you have ever seen. My dad made me a trundle bed and painted it white with little pink flowers. There was a matching wardrobe, toy box, and desk/shelving unit with pink and light blue shelves, also made by Dad. In one corner was (is, actually) this huge stuffed buffalo that my dad won for me at Astroworld. I loved that moment and I loved having that dang buffalo take up a whole corner of my room. In the opposite corner next to my bed was a stuffed, rainbow colored (um… nevermind 🙂 ) hot air balloon hanging from the ceiling. I had fallen in love with that balloon during one of our annual summer camping trips to Durango and my parents were kind enough to get it for me and cart the thing home (it wasn’t like it could be deflated, it was stuffed!) Behind my headboard were stuffed letters that spelled out my name with stuffed clouds surrounding it. It was one, big pillowy heaven with all of my gymnastics heroes hanging on the wall. And it was greener than the grass. I loved it. I never ever got tired of my room, particularly the color of it. It was still that exact way when I left for college, and frankly it is still that exact way today (although it is also doubling as a storage closet for all of my grandmother’s old antiques which my mother is still waiting for me to go through with her…one of these days, Mom.)

My point is, when I left for college it was rough leaving my little haven behind. Not that I didn’t create a little nest with every move. Every single one of my college dorm rooms was special in some way. My sophomore year I actually got these glow in the dark star stickers and I proceeded to create the constellations on my ceiling. It made me so freaking happy to look up at those stars from my loft bed every night. Hmmmm…I wonder if they are still there and who else might have enjoyed them (or been extremely annoyed by them as the case may be)! Every year I had a rough time abandoning my college nest at the end of the school year. As for Princeton in general… and maybe you can all relate to this… leaving college sucked. Royally. I resonate with that place at a deep level. It is like home.

Have you gotten the picture? I get attached! Now the thing about it is that all of the wise people tell us that attachment is a bad thing. Oh and your financial advisor, if you have such a thing, will tell you too- don’t get attached to your house. Not a good investment. Attachment bad. I get it. I get why they are saying it too. Let’s break it down, shall we? First off, what is the deal with me??? Why all of this attachment? I’m sure you all have your own theories brewing, but let me tell you a little more about my experience. The thing about it for me is… I feel things. No, no, I don’t mean I have feelings (although, yes, I do… shocking as that may be to some), I mean I feel things. Every single thing that I described above is a dead thing, right? It’s matter. It’s just stuff. Just a bunch of molecules smushed together. Put another way, there is no spirit in any of it. Right? Well, that’s what Descartes said anyway. That’s also what most of us continue to say. It is of the material world and therefore by (Cartesian) definition it is not of the spirit world. Are we sure?

Last time I checked my high school physics lessons, E=MC². In case you you have forgotten: energy = mass times the speed of light squared. In other words, energy is nothing more than mass (matter, material stuff) moving very, very, very fast. Put another way, mass (matter, material stuff) is energy moving…… in……. super……. super…….. super…….. slow…….. motion. Huh. Matter and energy are the same thing? I will get into this more in some future theory segment, but we have also known for over 100 years that at the quantum level particles (material stuff) and waves (energy stuff) are, you guessed it, the same thing. So… there is no spirit (energy) in the material stuff (matter), eh? Think again. Better yet, check your own experience. We are all nothing more than energy moving in super slow motion (relative to, say, the speed of light). Energy resonates- it moves in waves. I resonate. You resonate. We all resonate. Guess what else resonates? That’s right, things. Every single stinking thing resonates. Every last bit of the material universe. It’s all energy, resonating.

So why do the wise ones tell us not to get attached to these resonating things? Are they wrong? No. But I do believe that we have tended to misinterpret the message, both in the giving and the receiving of it. What we generally hear when we are told “don’t get attached” is “don’t get attached to the objective world- abide in spirit instead.” We take this to mean that the objective world is a throw away. It isn’t our real home. If you get attached to it, then you will preclude yourself from reaching your true home, which abides in spirit. Doesn’t that sound right? Yet what happens to this idea when we consider that perhaps the material world is nothing but energy. For me, energy is the equivalent of spirit. If that is the case, now what? To attach or not to attach, that is the question. Actually, this isn’t the question at all, because what is happening here is a confusion of terms.

Let’s return to my shoes. For me, all things- inanimate or otherwise- are energy/spirit, moving in super slow motion of course. Things don’t contain energy, they are energy. In my mind, a shoe is made up of all of the energy that went into its making. This includes the energy that went into the materials of which it is made as well as the energy that went into the design of it as well as the energy that went into the making of it as well as the energy that went into the packaging and delivery of said shoe to my foot. In this way, my shoes ground me and connect me to the earth by putting me into an energetic relationship with, well… everything else.

If this is difficult to imagine, think about the relationship between you and your food. The food that you eat quite literally becomes you. It becomes you in both material and energetic forms, if you insist on thinking these separate things. The nutrients become your new cells. The energy animates your actions in the world. But go even deeper. The food that you eat is a physical history of every energy that went into its formation. You may think it crazy, but the Buddhists have good reason to advise us not to eat angry chicken. That anger is literally stored in the material body of the chicken and when you eat it, it is physically/energetically transferred into you and becomes you. Seriously, friends, don’t eat angry chicken. And by the way, you don’t need to eat something to absorb its energy. Energy moves quite readily without any material interaction. It also moves with and as material. Are you getting the picture?… there is no escaping energy transfer.

This process of transferring and structurally incorporating energy from one thing into another thing has no end. My shoes go right on absorbing and incorporating the energy of me and my feet and everywhere we visit. That’s because all things are profoundly interconnected energetically, which is to say there is no real separation between the energy of this or that. Put simply, all things are energetically in relationship with one another. According to this worldview, I am by the very nature of existence in an energetic relationship with my shoes. And by extension, I am also in relationship with everything that went into the design and construction of my shoes. It can then be said that what is actually happening between me and my favorite shoes is that we are resonating together. Likewise, my car contains the energetic imprint of every person who has ever ridden in it, every place we have ever visited, and every event it has ever been involved in. The energetic imprint of my life from the ages of 5 to 22 is embedded in the green paint on the walls of my childhood bedroom, as well as everything else in there. I in turn carry the energetic imprint of all of these things around in me. The resonance between me and the things in my life is real.

So what to do with attachment? The issue that I am raising here is that we tend to confuse the word “attachment” with the word “relationship.” Too often, when we hear “don’t get attached”, our minds go right to… “don’t get into a relationship.” Yet it is impossible, as I hope I have explained above, to not be in relationship with the things in your life, be they thing things, plant things, animal things, or human things. If a thing has ever crossed your path, you are in relationship with it… even it if is no longer “in your life.” Actually, when thought through completely, there is nothing in existence that you are not in relationship with. I am in a loving relationship with my favorite shoes, my car, and the places I inhabit. That is to say that we resonate together, we support one another, we respect one another, we value one another, and so on. That, to me, is a proper relationship between me and the things in my life.

What is not helpful, as the wise ones would say, is for me to treat any of these things as a possession. This is the rub. The second we turn any type of thing (human things included) into a possession, we have objectified it. We have robbed it of its spirit. We have made it into something much less than what it actually is. If we hold on too tightly, we will prevent it from fully actualizing its own unique potential in the world. That is as disrespectful of spirit as anything can be. That is what holds us in chains. When we hold back a thing by seeing it as less than the divine being that it is, we by extension diminish our own self. When we honor every other thing as spirit, we honor our own self as spirit. Then, and only then, are we all free. So the next time you hear some wise one telling you to practice non-attachment, think non-possession. But by all means, be in relationship with, resonate with, and deeply love all of the things in your life. When it is time for something to go, really, do as Kondo says. She has it right. Thank it for its service and send it off with love.