Get Achingly Attached!

In my workshops I often hear whispers of a participant who’d previously been in one or more of my offerings telling another who had never been with me: ‘Don’t get attached to what we are doing, she will make you change it’. She, refers to me. I time and again wish I didn’t, as my heart truly hurts hearing this, and in the same time, I welcome the opportunity, once again, to correct the pivotal misunderstanding, and say: Oh, please, please get attached. Wholeheartedly. And then I ask a few rhetorical questions, in hope to clarify my stance. So was the case in the retreat I just came back from a couple of days ago, in Taos, in the high desert, in the ‘Land of Enchantment’, New Mexico, where attachment to place is strong, most evident, and inevitable.

And so I ask:

Do you not get attached to a place knowing full well you will have to leave soon and go back to your ‘own land’, perhaps less enchanted?

Do you not fall in love with a person, remembering how your heart was crushed last time you gave your heart away so generously?

Do you not fall in love knowing full well that no love is perfect, that physical love ends, by death, yours or another? Or by separation?

Do you not engage in intimacy and closeness, a lingering kiss, in fear you might be possibly left in your bed in the crack of dawn, heavyhearted?

Do you not believe wholeheartedly that you belong with another, one hundred percent, also knowing in utter certainty that eventually you won’t?

Do you not raise children understanding that one day they’ll leave, and after that they’ll keep on leaving, and leaving, and leaving some more?

Do you not raise them to not need you, knowing that one day they’ll finally, and hopefully learn and actually no longer need you?

Do you not go on a quest to know yourself or another, knowing there is no way possible to fully attain such knowledge? Or improve greatly?

Do you not go to sleep, knowing you’ll have to wake up tomorrow? Do you not eat once more? Do you not shower again? Do you not make peace?

Do you not start anything knowing full well that everything ends? That everything changes? That despair and forgetfulness are imminent?

Do you not get wild yourself witnessing wild poppies in multiple colors, knowing their green lacy leaves will be beige or even brown tomorrow?

Do you not take in the flamboyant petals, inhale their intoxicating scents through your nostrils, allowing sticky yellow powder to latch onto the same nostrils?

In fear it’ll all evaporate in thin air a couple seconds later? And the buzz of creatures with fluttering wings will disappear as the sun goes down?

Do you not swim naked with pulsating jellyfish knowing they may be dangerous, that they might sting you? That this is a fantasy, among many others?

Do you not speak of the dead with the one who is alive in fear that the said death no longer be only yours but also belong to someone else?

Do you not write a story in worry that the words you use to tell it may become another one, entirely, leaving your heart raw, and utterly exposed?

Do you not take your small boat into the open waters while afraid you might end up in a different shore entirely than the one you came from?

And last I ask them:

Do you not get attached to a piece of paper you glue on a surface, knowing it’ll be covered with another? May be even before the gluing medium had fully dried?

And I answer: Yes we do. Of course we do. We do get attached wholly. Fully. Time and again. As we are still alive, and that’s what we do best: Get attached!

Again

Again

Again

Again

As humans do!

As humans make!

As humans live!

As humans love!

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Orly