Attachment

On New Year’s Day, I set off to begin the year in India.  Lucky, grateful, ecstatic, in love.. these are only a few of the words I’d use to describe my feelings towards my experience.  Although I won’t go into heavy details just yet about how amazing my trip was on multiple levels, I do want to talk about why it’s been so difficult to re-adjust to life upon my return: ATTACHMENT.

I would describe attachment as the unwillingness to let go of a particular object, person, place, feeling, or the idea that you’ve created around such things.  It’s something that you may have had in the past, or dream about for the future, but that isn’t currently accessible in the present moment.  This kind of thing makes someone like me throw a raging fit on the inside like a child with unmet needs (attachments and needs, however, are somewhat different).

So I return to Montreal after a month in India and I just don’t want to be here.  It’s not that I’m not happy to be reunited with my partner, nor ungrateful for our warm and cozy condo; I just want to go on experiencing everything I was living while on my trip — the ability for things to just flow amidst seemingly absolute chaos; the feeling of having no responsibility except for seeing where the day takes me; the friendships and connections so easily made because of such freedom to be open; the fantasy of what life could be like if it just went on like this forever…

You can imagine how everyday life immersed in familiarity and comfort has never seemed so bleak.  Our long winter makes for a beautiful complement.  So it’s hard to let go.  I want what I can’t have and it’s torture.

Fortunately, life has taught me that getting one’s shit together is a process.  While familiarity and comfort can easily lead to regression and stagnation, my challenge is to use my creative energy to make things flow, as they so easily did while traveling.

Until I’m ready to move on, I’ll be under my covers in my wooly socks, clutching a warm cup of tea, and wishing I was back on the other side of the world*.  Peace.

*An ever so slight exaggeration for dramatic effect.