Thoughts on Detachment
Deliberate Detachment
In my philosophical and spiritual studies and practice, I find that detachment is one of the more difficult concepts to embody. Particularly through the stoic teachings, where I find myself most connected, it isn’t difficult to rationally see how healthy and beneficial indifference can be. My mind understands how detachment from desire can lead to greater appreciation and gratitude for life’s gifts. My mind understands that the best relationships I have are the ones where I bring the best version of myself. My mind fully grasps the importance of learning from the process of pursuing a goal or vision. My mind recognizes my own inability to control anything outside of my own actions and responses. Logically, this all makes total sense.
Sadly, my emotions and my Ego don’t always subscribe to my mind’s logic.
Detachment is a practice. It is a tool for action and a tool for reflection. It does not make us cold, nor does it make us emotionless. Detachment is a place where our higher selves operate from a place of rational and emotional congruency. In action, detachment contextualizes the nature of desire, other people, and the expectations we choose to set. In reflection, we can use detachment to better understand the catalysts for our own unhealthy responses and recognize that our human nature can be forgiven in the learning process. Detachment allows for self-compassion.
When I find myself anxious or allowing stress to impact my state of being, a mature response is to employ detachment from the external circumstances driving that anxiety or being blamed for that stress. When I look back on experiences that cause me shame, I often see that detachment could have been the remedy.
An example of detachment that I hold on to comes from when I was 8 years old. My family and I had floor seats to the Miami Heat versus Orlando Magic basketball game (yup, 'I was a lucky, spoiled kid). At the time I was a big Orlando Magic fan because my fickle, youthful self liked rooting for cool players more than hometown teams. Orlando had the two coolest players in the league with Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway. Rocking my Hardaway jersey, there my privileged ass sat, best seats in the house, supporting the wrong team.
During half-time of the game, the referee came over to our seats and asked me if I wanted to hold and dribble the basketball. Hell yes I did! I played all the time and would love to show off a bit! This was cool enough of an experience, but then the unthinkable happened.
The referee asked me if I wanted to keep the basketball after the game. Holy. Shit.
He told me he would bring me the ball after the game. No conditions or deal made. Just sheer human benevolence to make a child happy. I sat the whole game, giddy, and more well behaved than I can ever remember being. I was going to get to keep a NBA game ball! I would be so cool. My friends would think I was so cool.
It was one of the most memorable, infuriating, and disappointing events of my childhood.
Detachment Dissected
Since that event, my views on detachment have clearly changed. Today, my thoughts on the subject have led me to three primary areas where I am most focused on detachment’s most important opportunities and application. Mind you, these are my thoughts and subjective beliefs on the practice. By all means, feel free to substitute areas that may make more personal sense.
In my work to leverage detachment in regard to my own desires, relationships, and pursuits of outcome, I am working to train my emotions to be more mature. And look, I get it, the idea of detaching from these things certainly creates some questions. How do I get what I want if I am detached from my desires? How can I be loving, caring, and warm if I am detached from my relationships? How can I reach my goals if I am detached from outcome?
Stick with me here. Give me a few paragraphs to walk through my thinking before allowing emotions to block the potential idea that detachment can actually bring us closer to what we want, who we love, and what we’re growing toward.
Detaching From Desire
This detachment is the most common and likely the most palatable for most people to digest. For those Buddhist enthusiasts out there, the elimination of one’s attachment to desire is actually the core of the third of the Buddha’s four noble truths and paves the way to end one’s suffering. If that’s the most helpful path to guide understanding of this concept, then by all means, pleas use it.
For me, however, the detachment from desire is not so much about ending suffering. While that sounds nice, I have surrendered to the idea that my life is more about coming to terms with inevitable suffering and making conscious choices as to the forms of suffering from which I can most learn.
Detachment from desire is more around recognizing what I can control versus what I cannot.
“The faculty of desire purports to aim at securing what you want…If you fail in your desire, you are unfortunate, if you experience what you would rather avoid you are unhappy…For desire, suspend it completely for now. Because if you desire something outside your control, you are bound to be disappointed; and even things we do control, which under other circumstances would be deserving of our desire, are not yet within our power to attain. Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, within discipline and detachment.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion, 2.1–2
In detaching from desire that is ultimately outside of my control, I free myself from needing to fulfil that desire and open up the endless world of learning that comes from the pursuit of attaining something. Do I want to make more money at work? Of course. Do I want to not get cancer? Absolutely! Did I want to take home the basketball from that game? Duh. Detachment from those desires, however, frees up my energy to focus on what I can control.
I can focus on mastering the skills necessary to perform well at my job. I can live a physically and mentally healthy lifestyle. While I cannot guarantee the result, my own deliberate growth or improvement efforts will allow me to pursue meaning from a vision far beyond any external desire could ever offer.
Detaching From Relationships
Let me begin this one with a recognition that humans all have the need for love and belonging. Relationships tend to help meet that need and I am not here to argue Maslow. That said, I believe that healthy relationships are formed through detachment. Whether we’re talking about our relationships with our parents, our partners, our children, our bosses, our co-workers, our friends, or relationships with the systems we exist within, detachment is essential. I say this because it is through detachment that we give ourselves the energy and space to develop ourselves independent of those relationships. We self-author our maturation process and give those relationships a chance to evolve along side our own development processes.
Much has been written on attachment theory and the ways people are in their adult relationships based on the way they formed attachment needs as children. Again, not here to argue with Bowlby and Ainsworth, they were way smarter than I am. The context is important, however, as we are all subject to the emotional impact of attachment and any effort to detach will be more of the rider needing to train the elephant type of effort.
People and systems that we develop relationships with are all outside of our control (see a pattern here?). As such, our detachment from these relationships is vital to our ability to focus energy on the things we can control, such as the quality of the person we bring to those relationships. Do I want my wife to love me? Of course. Do I want my parents to accept my life choices? Absolutely. Do I have any true control over either of these scenarios working in my “favor”? Fuck no.
The point in detaching from relationships is not to throw your hands in the air and say “what’s the point anyway?” It isn’t to become cold and distant either. The point is to recognize that you can only control you. Our focus should be on becoming the best version of our true selves, realizing that relationships can only be healthy or “succeed” if we can continuously and deliberately be working on contributing that best true self. Any energy projected onto keeping a relationship intact that goes outside of that focus is a disservice to our growth.
A better version of ourselves makes for a better relationship. Trust that process and deliberately focus on that process, rather than the relationship being the end goal.
Detaching From Outcome
I briefly mentioned it earlier, but it is important to point out that Ego plays a major role in the ability to detach. We need to be able to surrender to this concept that we cannot control much of the world outside of us. This is a significant Ego hit. Ego does not like this.
We wants to achieve our goals. We want to have long lasting loving relationships. We want to win and succeed. Our Ego loves that shit.
Yet as I have mentioned in the past, life is an energy exchange. We deliberately choose where we want to focus and give our energy. Therefore, if we are focused on the end, we lose sight of the process it takes to get to that end. Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh famously said:
“I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself.”
It is not about the destination, it’s about the journey (apology for the cliché but it really fits here). It’s about what we learn from failing and stumbling. I recently read Seth Godin’s The Practice, where he vehemently pushes the importance of detaching from outcome. Much of his point is how the outcome serves as a catalyst for our practice to occur. In detaching from that outcome, we afford ourselves the energy to bring presence to the processes to reach that outcome. The learnings along the way.
Do we want to win the championship? Of course. Did I want to be the cool kid with the NBA game ball? Absolutely. Is the trophy or prize going to be the thing that makes me a better human being? Nope. It is in the process that we improve and that process requires our mindful presence to absorb as much as possible as it happens.
Keeping Our Eyes On The Ball
Parker Palmer says “we must value ignorance as much as knowledge and failure as much as success.” This can only be done through detachment. Through a recognition that wholeness does not mean perfection, but instead becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am. If we find our energy attached to a desire, to a relationship, or to an outcome, we sacrifice energy toward better understanding that true self.
As you may have guessed, my 8 year old self did not get the game ball from the basketball game that night. The referee had made a promise to a child that he could not keep (yup, total dick). There was nothing I could do, the desire, relationship, and outcome were all completely out of my control. No, I did not all of a sudden come to the wisdom of detachment after that event. In fact, I bitched and moaned about it for days after it happened. Yet looking back, I realize how much I missed out on that night. A game with my family, amazing seats, my favorite players. The entire experience fell victim to the disappointment.
The whole of who we are comes out in the process of practice, of work, of love, and of growth. We must be mindfully attuned to our processes, rather than to what we hope those processes will amount. It is in this allocation of energy, this work, that we can best hope to reach desired goals, healthy relationships, and positive outcomes.
To acknowledge and learn from what we can control is the most valuable attachment we can have.
