by Kris Gage
The basic cause of suffering isn’t that bad things happen.
Bad things will always happen. People will always fall out of love, or leave — in one way or another.
Our pain and hurt comes not from change, but from our attachment.
We expect things to be a certain way, and we’re crushed when it doesn’t happen.
When reality doesn’t match up to the image, friction happens and pain occurs.
The solution isn’t to cling more desperately to someone — or the idea of them and your relationship.
Your salvation isn’t in coupling up with “the one” who promises to never leave you.
The solution is to accept that everything in life changes.
Non-attachment is happiness.
It’s setting up reasonable expectations.
When you live without attachment, you live with honesty. You allow things to flow their natural course, accept that which you cannot control — which is everything outside your own mindset — and instead curate your wellbeing through your state of mind (one of lightness.)
Non-attachment is about humility. It’s understanding our smallness in the grand scheme of the universe, and the limitations of our control.
It means loving lightly.
It’s about not attaching yourself to your partner. It’s not about preoccupation with the concept of marriage or maintaining any demands around how long the relationship will last.
Rather than falling in love with an expectation or image, you love the person as a fellow human being making their own way in the universe.
Rather than wanting your partner (and relationship) to stay the same forever, it’s loving enough to leave them unleashed — and free.
Loving is accepting a partner fully — for who they are in each moment, even as things change.
Because they always will.
And it’s appreciating them so much more because you’re ever-aware of that none of this will last forever!
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Kris Gage is a motorcyclist, software manager and drink-slinger of the south ?.
Contact him @ email
