Nothing Is Permanent, Nothing Is Really Ours

Attachment is understood as a bond, a very strong affective bond that determines the development of personality, the way we relate to others and everything around us, and even the way we see life. However, attachment has a drawback: nothing is permanent, none of it is really ours.

A certain kind of attachment is needed. It is someone who needs a stable figure in the first years of life for a correct cognitive and emotional development later. On the other hand, insecure attachment is one that fills us with anxiety and fear towards the object or person for whom we feel this attachment. In fact, all relationships have a certain attachment component, although not all types are healthy.

Some of our relationships can make us anxious about the prospect of loss. To avoid this, we must remember that whatever life has given us is only a loan, as nothing is permanent. Being grateful is the first step in having a secure attachment to the people around us. The same happens with work, vacations and any situation at the present time.

We need to understand that nothing is permanent

Having relationships in which we feel secure is not a gift, but an art that requires willingness and practice. When a relationship is maintained only out of habit, and there are no other reasons that give it meaning, we are faced with an insecure attachment. The ideal for our mental hygiene is to end this situation.

If we don’t learn to let go, if we don’t let go, the consequences will be much more negative. If the attachment can do more than we do and we get stuck, stuck in dreams, fantasies and illusions, suffering will grow without stopping and sadness will be our traveling companion. Buddha, in one of his famous phrases, indicated that the origin of suffering is precisely attachment.

However, not all attachments are bad, there are some that are necessary and useful. A secure attachment is based on knowing how to take advantage of what we have right now, without needing it to stay by our side to be well. If we look at what is causing us pain with a new perspective, we will understand that it is not this object that causes us pain, but the way in which we attach ourselves to it.

Our problem with attachment happens because we perceive things as permanent entities. In striving to achieve our goals, we employ aggressiveness and competition as supposedly effective tools, and we destroy ourselves more and more in the process. To avoid this, you need to understand that nothing is permanent.

dependence on independence

Our cultural context invites us to live depending on other people: parents, children, loving companions, etc. From an early age, they impose on us the idea of ​​romantic love, one in which the members of the couple cannot and should not live far from each other. However, addiction in romantic relationships is highly harmful, making us totally incapable at an emotional level.

Dependency, like any other construct (mental construct created from simple elements to be part of a theory), is neither good nor bad by itself. To some degree it is always present in our lives. It’s something we should all admit to the world and to ourselves, as it would lead us to recognize and acquire healthier relationship styles with other people.

Currently, there is a tendency to treat addiction with a certain contempt, as if it were a sign of weakness. However, if we stop to think about it, almost every aspect of life is the result of the efforts of others. Our precious and magnificent independence can be more an illusion, or a fantasy, than a tangible fact. To have a happy life, we need friends, good health and material goods; curiously, they are areas in which we depend on other people.

Our need for others is a paradox. While, in our culture today, we extol the fiercest independence, we also crave intimacy and connection with a special and dear person. The secret, therefore, is in loving, but not needing.