Attachment

I have had so much to absorb these past two weeks about Katonah yoga as a framework for life.

But I have to expand upon it personally, I can’t say the same thing over and over again. Instead of looking at myself and saying, “I’m a bad sleeper, the blankets fall down while I sleep and I get cold” with this framework I can say, “my shoulder isn’t in the right place to hold the blanket up”. It takes the emotion out of it. It’s not my fault. I shouldn’t feel bad, the shoulder being where it is is impersonal. That’s the key to the Katonah framework. I’m not upset about something that isn’t connected to my emotion, but simply an observation. Looking at the shoulder objectively, I can fix it, instead of wallowing in the fact that its “wrong”. If we can all go through life less connected to things, we would be a lot more content.

Matt D’Avella announced on his YouTube channel that he and his wife have sold most of their belongings and are moving to Australia – without a return date in mind. At first I’m like, but you must be so connected to all of those things you have worked hard to procure and curate in your space. Then I’m like, no you’re not. They are only things. In this snapshot they served you, in the next snapshot they won’t. You can always buy them again. It must be quite freeing to do that, sell everything to go anywhere.

So maybe our biggest hang up in life is how much we invest in attachment. It is exhausting and causes so much unnecessary worry. Even for the impeding food crisis and shutdown due to Covid. There will still be something to eat, some place to go. A means of acquiring what we need. What if we do actually run out of toilet paper? How interesting that would be. It would be worth sharing that experience with others. Yes, putting yourself out there is hard. Starting a website, a blog, a YouTube channel is hard. But if you look at it as a snapshot, a moment, won’t it be fine? And if it’s a little weird or out of place, won’t that make it more interesting to others?

Some things to think about, makes room for others to grow.

Originally published December 14, 2020