Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

This past weekend, The Gryphon and I watched Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, which is about a man's introspective journey as he deals with grief over his wife's death.

We got into a discussion over the use of Buddhist imagery in the film, which The Gryphon felt was largely out of place.

I said that, from my perspective, it represented the journey of the main character as he reached a certain enlightenment, coming to terms with the principal of attachment.

The Western world has a lot of problems with attachment, though I suppose this is no different from anywhere else. Simply put, it's bad for you spiritually to get too attached to anything, whether it's a material object, a person or an idea.

At the time, I thought he was being callous towards my feelings. After all, what greater thing is there than love, and therefore, what greater loss? Now, with the maturity of years, I see what he meant.

I understand now that it didn't help me to remain attached to a marriage that had ended, to let that stand in the way of my healing.

I'm reminded also of attachment when I see shows like TLC''s Clean Sweep, where an organizational expert goes into someone's house, cluttered high with stuff, and helps them get rid of much of it, then reorganize what's left. This is another form of attachment I've struggled with.

I'll hold onto anything I think might be useful again, as well as sentimental items, but this often means holding onto things long beyond reason. It's a constant struggle for me in this material, consumer culture, and I periodically purge my dresser drawers and closets, to fight against this bad habit.

Deepak Chopra talked about this concept the other night in an interview with Glenn Beck on CNN Headline News. He said, "It's an ugly word to call somebody who has the imagination and the capacity for poetry and art and music and connection with the divine, to call them a consumer."

He explained the mentality behind consumerism: "It's not the love of money. It's the attachment. It's the clinging. It's the clinging; it's the grasping, not the money itself.

I personally believe the longer you hold onto an object the harder it is to get rid of it. The longer you've had it, the more importance it gains, even if it's an old sock with no match. But if you've been holding onto it for a couple years, it's harder to say, "There's no reason to keep this unless I turn it into a sock puppet."

Attachment, as I see it, is the inability to face change. You want to hold onto whatever you have now, whether it's good or bad. Think of how many people you've known who stay in a bad relationship, stay with a thankless job, just because they're afraid of change.

Ten years ago when I had that conversation with my yoga instructor, I thought, "So, does this mean we should never grow attached to anybody? We should never love anybody." I now realize those are two separate questions.

If you love someone, you should embrace the changes that may come. You will both change and grow as individuals. Your physical appearance will change. You jobs will change. Your hobbies will change. Your ways of interacting may change. As long as you're prepared to embrace those changes, you can both grow from it, and your love grow, too.

Often, problems in relationships stem from the inability to accept changes in the other person, changes in their life situations. One or both of them remain attached to their concept of what the other person should be, what their life should be like, and fail to appreciate the changes.

Think about it: we change every day. Our nails grow. Our hair grows. Our skin cells regenerate. We gain or lose weight. We learn. If we change so much every day, isn't it unreasonable to expect everything else to stay the same?

The ancient Japanese called this earthly world the Floating World, a world of illusion, constantly shifting and ultimately unimportant. Have you ever dreamt you were talking to somebody and they became someone else? Well, the Floating World is a bit like that: illusory and shifting, but at a slower pace.

Of course, it's easier for me to explain these concepts than it is, sometimes, to live by them. I have trouble, for example, accepting changes I view as negative, such as how things might have changed in my hometown. But I know that, while it's important to remember what might have come before, hanging onto an ideal version of the past can only lead to heartbreak.

Think of people who refuse to change their hairstyle for 30 years. Often they're trying to recapture the past, a time when they were young and hip, full of optimism about their future. They fear that changing their hairstyle will mean admitting that they're growing older. Yet, ironically, by holding onto an out-of-date look, they age themselves even more.

Even as I was dictating this into my digital voice recorder, I had to face inconstancy. My dog, Una, and I were walking along our usual route when we encountered three dogs roaming the neighborhood in a pack. We avoided an incident by walking away from them slowly, and then we stopped at the police station to notify them the dogs were roaming around unsupervised.

To do so, I had to leave Una with a helpful clerk in the parking ticket and fines portion of the building, so I could walk up to the police section. She told me, when I returned, that Una missed me, which probably meant she whimpered the whole time. It seems Una has an even harder time with attachment than I do.

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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