A

November    23rd

ATTACHMENTS ARE THE ENEMY

“In short,  you must    remember    this—that   if  you hold    anything    dear    outside of  your    own reasoned

choice, you will    have    destroyed   your    capacity    for choice.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.4.23

ccording to Anthony de Mello, “there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The
name of that thing is Attachment.” Attachments to an image you have of a person, attachments to
wealth and status, attachments to a certain place or time, attachments to a job or to a lifestyle. All of those
things are dangerous for one reason: they are outside of our reasoned choice. How long we keep them is
not in our control.
As Epictetus realized some two thousand years before de Mello, our attachments are what make it so
hard to accept change. Once we have them, we don’t want to let go. We become slaves to maintaining the
status quo. We are like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland—running faster and faster to stay in the
same place.
But everything is in a constant state of change. We have certain things for a while and then lose them.
The only permanent thing is prohairesis, our capacity for reasoned choice. The things we are attached to
can come and go, our choice is resilient and adaptable. The sooner we become aware of this the better.
The easier it will be to accept and adapt to what does happen.