The state of detachment goes both ways: it is ideal in a world of many changes and uncertainties, but it has its own pitfall. Who are we without our attachments to people, our professions, our favorite things, our homes, our cities? Who are we if not our parents' children, our siblings' brothers/sisters, someone's friend, someone's spouse, someone's lover, or our children's parents? It is said that our individual lives only truly exist in the mind, as a matter of perspective or perhaps as a grand illusion. Either way, the life that lies beyond our tangible selves is ultimately, perpetually, detached and apart from us; attachments are only formed in the mind, not exactly in the flesh and bones, well, except perhaps for a few instances: mothers and their sons/daughters in the womb, or men/women in the act of intimacy — but even these have their own natural limits. (One may ask: how about the rare cases of conjoined twins?)

  

The state of detachment is inherently true in the bodily sense, but the more difficult part is detaching mentally or emotionally. We may lose or get rid of an object, cut off a habit, move out of a place, say goodbye to a person, but that doesn't always equate to detachment. The supposedly detached will then become phantoms, or become our own private little gods, that haunt our days, our every action. Instead of the opposite, these phantoms still cling to us, are still attached, and the only way to lose them is to also lose bits of ourselves with it: we cease being its owner, its performer, its resident, its friend, along with all the possibilities and meanings that these identities may entail. To express detachment in more physical terms, it is like having one's limb chopped off; but then do we accept to live and adapt to a life without the functions of such metaphorical limb? Do we let the carved out part remain hollow? Do we learn to give up the infinite 'what-ifs'? Or I guess the more important question is can we?

 

Diderot's got a fancy new robe. He found that this new object did not fit in with his dingy room and his old, drab things. This was not who he was — old and drab. And it gave him a spark of inspiration: acquire new things that complement his new robe as well as complement his very person — who he thought he was or who he wanted to be. In other words, buy his way into a shiny identity. I also got a new room and along with it, a new rug, new linens, new knickknacks, all of which promised me the same: I'd become my ideal self, one purchase at a time. 

We let ourselves be represented by the material things we possess or acquire; a big chunk of our identities are tied to the physical aspects of ourselves. Through the clothes we wear, we portray to the world that we are creative, or carefree, or fearless, or smart, or successful. And not just with clothes, there are so many other ways of expression: the limited editions we own speak of our uniqueness; the spaces we occupy speak of our taste or upbringing; the books buried in dust on our shelves speak of our intellect; the trophies we win at school or at work speak of our worth; and so on.

We are evolutionarily and socially wired to make judgments based on the physical image — on the external shell — of others. But with this hyper-focus on the 'image' nowadays, a skin-deep approach to our identities and values is slowly becoming enough. 

In these times of limited movement, with the days becoming more repetitive and bleak, the ability to be happy is dependent on the pleasure of the new. A superficial source of novelty, and perhaps the most obvious, is retail. Shopping for new things may be comparable to the rush of a drug, especially shopping for useless junk because what is mainly bought for function is quite often more somber. Then, there's also social media, which is another way to ease the brain's craving for the new. This may not come as a surprise since we now know and defeatedly accept that most apps are designed with our addiction to newness in mind. Every time we open a social media app, we are presented with newer and newer content (through which we can infinitely scroll!) and some cleverly-placed ads of shiny things and experiences that we must — must — possess. And down into the rabbit hole of consumerism I go.

It may be unfair in my part to blame the external circumstances. Prior to any lockdowns, how else can we explain the dumb willingness to keep upgrading our perfectly fine gadgets? Or the urge to constantly travel to unchartered places? Or the habit of jumping from one hobby to another? Or the hard work of maintaining relationships once the allure of the new eventually wears off? Perhaps this addiction to newness simply is a product of a biological process that we are all slaves to. It may also stem from such blindness to living, such mindlessness, from not knowing what we genuinely need or want, and so the exploration of limitless choices, of what is new, can be most appealing. And that thirst for limitless choices is some sort of refusal to grow up and to settle on one kind of life, a starvation like that of Plath at the foot of a branching fig tree. Yet, one of the best gifts of newness is the ability to be present in the moment, to witness the unfamiliar with fresh eyes and clear mind; and so, perhaps an addiction to newness is the inability to be fully awake in our old, familiar conditions and environments.

The pursuit of newness, or the struggle to satiate an addiction to newness, is unsustainable — what is new will always become old, will always become familiar and predictable, and we may burn ourselves out in the endless chase for the next new thing. 

I grew up cultivating, at least self-consciously, only my external shell. Much of my time and energy was spent on improving only this part of myself. In maturity, I shifted my focus from how I look to how I think, fooled by the notion that you could only choose between either one's mind/soul or one's body. But I came to learn that balance must be maintained at all times, at all cost, which meant that I wasn't really obligated to favor one over the other and that people are more or less free or fluid in matters like these. 

Last year, I re-watched one of my most favorite shows ever — The OA (on Netflix). The main character, called OA, mentioned in passing about the idea of 'invisible self', which at first I hadn't given much thought until later on when I outlined my own personal distinctions between what constitutes the invisible self and the external shell.

The Invisible Self: one's life philosophy, or what we choose to believe in, the values we hold and practice, the lessons we've learned from continual living; one's life meaning, which we carefully determine despite what seems to be an absurd existence; one's perspective or outlook, or how we see the world (e.g. an objectively fortunate person with a poor outlook will always be miserable and vice-versa); one's collection of memories and experiences, both the good and the bad; one's capacities, in forms of creativity or intellect; and one's openness and connectedness, or the ability to connect, with oneself, with others, and with the world. 

The External Shell: one's bodily health and wellness; one's physical beauty or features; and one's quantifiable successes, in terms of education, career, finances, material assets, or milestones (e.g. getting promoted, owning a dream car or a dream house, getting married, saving up a million, and so on).

In the show I've earlier mentioned, one of plot points is that a person can travel across dimensions but the version of life in one dimension may be different from that in the other dimensions. The factors which can unpredictably change in a person's life may be what an external shell is: it is built on conditions beyond our control and is at the mercy of fate, thus there's no guarantee of its constancy. The invisible self, on the other hand, is one's inner hold, an inner power not as apparent as the shell, and is not as easily stolen or destroyed despite life's waxing and waning.

Cultivating one part over the other does not make a person worse or better; but to bank heavily on one's external shell, leaving the invisible self barren, is a set up for deep frustrations when disaster strikes. That said, it's just as pernicious to focus only on the invisible self, abandoning the external shell in ruins; as the iconic pop song goes, "we are living in a material world..." and we are, after all, material creatures who recalibrate our view of our lives in relation to this very material world we partake in.

with love,

abelink