11 min
Detach yourself from everything to find peace, is it as radical as it sounds? 3T
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- Self-Improvement
Throughout life, we struggle to live a truly authentic life; one that addresses our need to self-actualise. It’s difficult because our society is one where attachment is viewed as paramount to progression. To be attached to financial gain, romantic love, success, fame and image is testament to what it means to be alive in the modern, capitalist system that we inhabit.
Our attachments are thrown onto us for survival as a child. A defenceless toddler would be unable to feed or find warmth unless they were so fiercely attached to their parents. Even throughout our growth as a human; these attachments shape us for better or for worse.
Our teenage years are marked with the attachment to our wider community and society. The school we study at or the university we attend all create this deep sense of attachment to who we are. Our friend’s opinions on our fashion, our tastes and career path all begin to mould us into this inauthentic automaton that isn’t aware of its own social conditioning.
They don’t fill any of the emotional voids that we ignore; instead they help us to build this false sense of the World. Ironically, our false narrative is usually shared by the vast majority of society- part of this capitalist, western, commodified and consumption driven consciousness that isn’t natural or rational but somehow makes sense.
It’s clearly not working.
The way we have chosen to live as Western civilisation, using capitalism to drive our economic principles while trying to adapt to technologies that only a small percentage of humanity truly understand.
Through all this mess and complexity; detachment appears to be one of the easiest ways to reach a level of contentment in this dynamic and rapidly changing reality.
To be detached, is to let go.
It’s to let go of your attachment to the outcome. To be present through the process.
Once you let go of your attachment to the way things ‘should’ be, your mind will instead focus on what ‘could’ be.
Throughout life, we struggle to live a truly authentic life; one that addresses our need to self-actualise. It’s difficult because our society is one where attachment is viewed as paramount to progression. To be attached to financial gain, romantic love, success, fame and image is testament to what it means to be alive in the modern, capitalist system that we inhabit.
Our attachments are thrown onto us for survival as a child. A defenceless toddler would be unable to feed or find warmth unless they were so fiercely attached to their parents. Even throughout our growth as a human; these attachments shape us for better or for worse.
Our teenage years are marked with the attachment to our wider community and society. The school we study at or the university we attend all create this deep sense of attachment to who we are. Our friend’s opinions on our fashion, our tastes and career path all begin to mould us into this inauthentic automaton that isn’t aware of its own social conditioning.
They don’t fill any of the emotional voids that we ignore; instead they help us to build this false sense of the World. Ironically, our false narrative is usually shared by the vast majority of society- part of this capitalist, western, commodified and consumption driven consciousness that isn’t natural or rational but somehow makes sense.
It’s clearly not working.
The way we have chosen to live as Western civilisation, using capitalism to drive our economic principles while trying to adapt to technologies that only a small percentage of humanity truly understand.
Through all this mess and complexity; detachment appears to be one of the easiest ways to reach a level of contentment in this dynamic and rapidly changing reality.
To be detached, is to let go.
It’s to let go of your attachment to the outcome. To be present through the process.
Once you let go of your attachment to the way things ‘should’ be, your mind will instead focus on what ‘could’ be.
11 min