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.