Andy Mort: Attachment and Letting Go

Sometimes being human feels a bit like being a Katamari ball. Katamari is a video game where you basically move a big ball around, and everything it touches gets stuck to it, like it’s a big magnet, with the ball getting bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier, with all this junk attached to it as it trundles along.

In much the same way, as we roll through life we pick up things that stick to us too. In the form of experiences, trauma, life lessons, cultural expectations, notions of right and wrong. All the things that rub off on us as we bump along, trying to figure out which way to turn next. 

Some of these things that attach themselves to us are useful are beneficial. Skills and learnings that make us better routefinders through the maze of life. Other things start to weigh us down like a big suit of armour made out of trash. Things like anger and resentment, bitterness, unhelpful biases and beliefs that hinder us, that get in the way of our contentment and happiness, distorting our world view, and harming our relationship with ourselves, with others, and the world around us. And ultimately, we being to lose the sense of where we end, and the suit of armour begins.

But what’s funny about this these things that attach themselves to us, to our egos, our identities, our self-worth, our neuroses, and our neural pathways, is that much of the time, we’re the ones who are attached, and not the other way around. We are the ones clinging on for dear life, almost as if we’re lost at sea, grasping on to a lead weight, believing it’s a life jacket.

The Buddhists among us will tell us that attachment is suffering. Attachment to being right. Attachment to our sense of identity. Attachment to our pride, to our dreams and aspirations, to those things that we believe will make us happy when they arrive. The big house, the career success, the status and the respect. Yet, paradoxically, it’s when we stop clinging and let all of those things go, that we will ultimately find the happiness we were looking for all along, and we will understand that it was with us the whole time.

But if attachment can cause us suffering, what then of detachment and ‘non attachment’. Are these the antidote that we’re looking for? Can we still have nice things if we stop striving for them? Or is that still a form of striving? Do we have to live like monks in order to be happy?

To help me understand this, I reached out to Andy Mort, who has written in detail about the difference between attachment, detachment and non-attachment. Andy is a coach and mentor for creatives, as well as being a musician and artist himself. He shared some of his ideas about how we can be less attached to the things that don’t serve us, and how, if we really want to get a grip, the best way might actually be to let go.

Useful Links:

www.andymort.com