This essay will be a sort of thought experiment in which we lay out the landscape of emotional attachment, in a simplified form, and use that to understand how emotional attachment affects us.
Imagine, on one side of our emotional attachment landscape, there is a rock. This rock has all the attributes of normal rocks. It just is. It just is there. It does not react. You can cry, fall, get hurt, die in front of the wrong, it won’t care. You can step on it, you can pick it up and throw it, you can yell at it; the rock is not affected. This rock exemplifies the extreme side of the spectrum of emotional attachment. It is not attached at all.
On the other side of the spectrum is the super-intelligence. This super-intelligence knows and feels everything. It is hyper socially aware and hyper prescient. It can sense danger. It knows what everybody is thinking, feeling, regretting, nervous of, at any moment in any place.
The world, from the viewpoint of the rock, is very orderly. It is very simple. There is essentially nothing going on. The world could end tomorrow and it doesn’t matter. Everything is the way it should be. Nothing is able to affect the rock’s world.
The world, from the viewpoint of the super-intelligence, is chaos. It is aware of everything. The world is a chaotic, never ending action film of randomness. People are walking, falling, crying, dying, winning, losing, getting lost, being confused, being hungry, everywhere in every moment. Absolute chaos.
As humans, we are somewhere in between the rock and the intelligence. We are aware of some things and we are unaware of other things.
Between humans, some of us are more aware than others. Some of us don’t have much empathy, while others have a lot of empathy.
Those of us who are closer to rock can watch someone fall down the stairs and care less than the person closer to the super-intelligence. Those of us who are closer to the super-intelligence can care more when someone’s feelings are hurt or when someone is yelling at us. We have differing levels of sensitivity.
This affects our focus, our concentration, our presence. Have you have tried to be focused while something emotionally intense is ravaging your mind? It is not possible. The super-intelligence cannot be present with its thoughts. The rock does not have a problem with focus or distraction.
So where do we want to be? Sometimes we want to feel. Sometimes we don’t want to feel. Sometimes we want to engage with the emotions of life. Sometimes we want to be able to ignore everything.
Can we control where we are on the continuum? Can we wake up one day and turn off the awareness, the empathy, the sensitivity? Can we turn it back on when we visit with our family that we haven’t seen for a year?
Can we care equally for the stranger who falls down the stairs as we do when our mother falls down the stairs?
It is interesting to think about the attachments we have and the strength of those attachments. Do some exist that don’t belong? Should some exist that don’t?
- K
2 Comments
This was an interesting essay. Think in the current state of the world, for those of us adhering strictly to keeping ourselves safe and virus free, emotions are all over the place. For me, the government is agitating, the virus is anxiety gets producing , and being socially isolated is just not normal. the best way to remain emotionally intact, is to talk long walks, read, watch stupid tv, cook a ton and a form a pod with my daughter’s family, my grandchildren and speak, on the phone, with my friends and son!
Hi Brooke (…I’m used to saying Mrs. Zimmerman haha), sorry I am just responding. I am just logging back into my blog after a long time in the attempt to write some more. I agree with all your sentiments….and it is Oct. 20, 2021. I have recently been getting a lot of relaxation from talking with my friends on the phone. It is hard during graduate school and job searching to find time, but I am following what makes me feel good.