Chapter 5: Clinging Children
Are your attachments holding you back? Are you feeling too short on time for newer, deeper attachments to things in your life? Are you holding on to something that has lost its hold of you? Are you moving forward, backwards or not moving at all?
Similar to traffic or a long line, there’s a dissonance in being stationary despite having somewhere to go. This feeling of impatience builds itself a pathway towards internal movement. The tiring physical state of standing still causes an internal wish to rush towards a more gratifying, progressive state. When more time than expected is being taken up by the unexpected, it becomes difficult to see the progress being made and your processes being fulfilled. But just like time, you are always moving forward; if you allow yourself to see it.
All things in life are processes. Aging, building skills, digestion, becoming who you are, etc. Through time we’ve come to prefer quick transactions, easy effort and instant gratification in our processes. We have fast food and convenience stores that get us in and out for quick consumption. We have short form content as our entertainment. We have AI agents cutting down time spent critical thinking. We are given an idea of love at first sight which discourages some to work to sustain relationships. We look to cut corners in our own work while we disguise it as genius, innovative efficiency. We tend to avoid processes for the justification of there not being enough time when we know that’s not true. Our lazy and impatient nature comes and goes but it is our responsibility to see when it is influencing our acceptance of what is and isn’t slowing us down.
You are your own traffic jam. You have many places you want to go, things you want to see and do but each idea must wait for its turn to exit. But we also exhibit too much pride to ask for help getting out of our dilemmas. Since we lack the energy for certain goals, we decide whether something is for us or not; we don’t always do the work to attain the resources we need. An orderly exit of all traffic depends on more than speed and efficiency. It requires cooperation.
Time progresses and we often blame time for not giving enough of itself, while we were just sitting still. Understanding how parts of you impede your flow of effort from advancing towards your destination is the key to ending traffic jams. It may feel like exhausting work but with it, you begin a new process for yourself. Trusting the process and finding fulfillment in the time you spend working towards your destination is the easiest way to avoid long-term stagnation. When you tap into it, you then become the controller of time.
Are your attachments holding you back from exploring new things that are piquing your interest? Therefore to add in newer, deeper things, it just feels like losing or letting go of your previous attachments? But do your previous attachments have a true passionate hold on you or are you holding on because it’s familiar? And with that fear of letting go that you might have, are you moving backwards, forwards or staying still? Sometimes re-exploring our long held attachments in a different way reveals the deeper, passionate reason as to why we hold onto them. Sometimes through misuse, poor appreciation or low motivation our attachments become worn out and detached. But trust the process, do not create traffic within yourself to avoid addressing what you need to. Be honest with yourself and do not be afraid to let go in order to reconnect.