detach. float.

I spent today on the couch, under my doona, in my trackies. Holed up inside while the rain fell outside (and through my roof tapping on my ceiling). I had a pity party, and no one was invited except me. Was lovely, and very much required.

 

After I got bored with looking at the growing water stain on my ceiling I watched daytime tv instead. Horrors. Although I do have this to say about daytime tv: it certainly puts things into perspective.

 

Take Dr Phil: three married couples, early 20’s trying to work out why they can’t stand their spouse anymore, and why (for two of the couples at least) they put up with physical abuse from the other (the third couple were just into threats of calculated murder). Now that’s misery. Makes me think, why do I spend so much time wishing for ‘marriage’ and/or relationship if it can turn out like that?

 

Then Oprah: the science of attraction – why and how people are attracted to each other. Apparently it has to do with smell, and right timing of the month. Hmm, pretty small window. No wonder sniffing out ‘the one’ is like a game of darts in the dark.

 

However, like a butterlamp glowing in the corner, the ABC offered up a little piece on Buddhism, snuck in between programs, to remind me of the philosophy of detachment.

 

In Buddhism, the four noble truths centre around the idea that life produces suffering, and suffering is created when we become slaves to our senses. When we crave, yearn, expect, we suffer.

 

The idea of detachment is not one of turning your back on everything in the world, but rather of becoming unattached to any outcome. To love without expecting anything in return; to view good and bad as cut from the same cloth, and as transitory events; to try and dwell in that part of ourselves where we view our lives as a third person: it is happening, but only to my physical body, not to the essence of me.

 

It makes sense; the only absolute in life is that there will eventually be death. Everything else is uncertain. We attach ourselves to human beings, but it is inevitable that there will be a parting, whether through our own design, or through death.

 

And so, I’m going to try and imagine myself as the centre of a merry-go-round – still and observant, while the animals wheel around me, and while people come and go, riding for a while, then getting off.

 

Next ride starts in 10. Get your tickets here.