“Attachment nails our desire to specific objects and creates addiction. Detachment is a liberation of those desires.”
-Addictions and Grace, Gerald May
“Everyone says: you must take sides, choose a political party, choose a philosophy, choose a dogma…I chose the dream of human love. Whatever I ally myself to is to be close to my love. With it I hope to defeat tragedy, to defeat violence. I dance, I sew, I mend, I cook for the sake of this dream. In this dream nobody dies, nobody is sick, nobody separates. I love and dance with my dream unfurled, trusting darkness, trusting the labyrinth, in the furnaces of love. Some say: the dream is escape. Some say: the dream is madness. Some say: the dream is sickness. It will betray you…The [world] I see is not the one the…world sees. This is the witchcraft of love. You can take sides in religion, you can take sides in history, and there are others with you, you are not alone. But when you take the side of love, the opium of love, you are alone.”
-The Four-Chambered Heart, Anais Nin,
“Letting others take care of their own affairs and not doing for others what they need to do for themselves is detachment. Not creating or preventing a crisis when it’s clearly not our business to be involved is detachment. Not manipulating others to carry out some aspect of their lives according to our wishes rather than according to their own plan is detachment. It is neither kind nor unkind to be detached. It is simply being in charge of the only things we need to be in charge.“
-Codependence and the Power of Detachment, Karen Casey
“Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important – what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right – so long as it’s not yourself?”
- The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
I swear the word picked me. And if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, there’s not much you can do once the word has picked you. I mean, you could, I suppose ignore it. But it’ll keep showing up, everywhere, like the cat that just keeps coming back. Or like a baby tucked into a basket on a cold winter’s night, left on your porch by some mysterious delivery man who rings the doorbell and runs. Anyone with any sort of heart, let alone curiosity, will eventually open the door and take the basket inside where it’s warm. Even if you can’t keep it, you can’t just leave it out there to starve or freeze to death.
I don’t choose words. They choose me. This is my fifth year picking a word. Free. Childlike. Messy. Vulnerable. Detached. And the words are getting curioser and curioser. Truth be known, I like that. I’d be the sort that would get bored with this word a year thing if I had to pick words that seemed normal, but made me yawn. Let’s just say there is no yawning with this year’s word, and perhaps I should also add that when I first pulled back the blankets from the baby I thought, surely this can’t be mine to own. But I did what any respectable person would do, I put the blankets back overtop that shocking infant mug and let the thing hangout in the corner for awhile.
I flirted with a few other words along the way: the je ne sais quoi attitude of “penache” in June mentioned by my friend Valerie, the mystical and disappearing qualities of “wind” in August, and “clairvoyance” in December, spoken of in a novella by Anais Nin. All of these words may well find their way into my 2013, they may in fact even be the decorative costumes my word dresses up in when it’s feeling a little frisky, but they are not in fact THE word that wants to burrow in under my skin and set up residency with me as the host.
In October my friend Janae sent me two books by Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. When I started reading The Fountainhead, which was in early November, I felt like I was chewing steak. When this happens I know I’m reading a book at precisely the right time. And all I could think about as I read was the word detach, detach, detach.
Art Journal Page from October 2012
I had first been drawn to that word “detach” in 2010, sitting at a Benedictine Sister’s Retreat Center by myself on a bed in a sparsley decorated room reading a book called Addictions and Grace. Ever since then that word had taken on a new positive, healthy meaning for me, and when I started reading The Fountainhead I decided this was confirmation that this word detach was going to be a pretty good fit for me.
At first I didn’t want to tell anyone about it. Everyone will think sitting with VULNERABLE for 2012 made me crazy. They’ll think I’ve decided to ride the pendulum clear to the other side and put up walls and break off relationships. Outwardly I realized this would seem like the strangest word choice yet, but inwardly, there was a part of me begging to give it a shot. “Please, please trust that you desire this word. Please, please trust that this could be precisely the other shore that the boat vulnerable was sailing you towards. Please, please don’t shy away from it just because it may have the appearance of undoing everything you did by sitting with VULNERABLE.”
I mentioned the word to a few friends, trying it out for size, as if I had donned an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka-dot bikini and was stepping out from the locker room to get an honest opinion from a trusted source.
One friend said to me rather nervously, “If that’s what you pick, I’ll let you try the word out on me.”
“Why do you say it that way?” I asked.
“Because it makes me nervous that I might be setting myself up to lose you as friend.”
I realized then and there the word has baggage, and if I’m going to lug it around for a year, I’m going to have to kick-off some of the residual cling-ons so the load can be as light and carefree as I see it in my skull and feel it in my flesh.
I want this though, and I suppose in the end, that’s what matters. That if a part of you is screaming inside for some sort of permission, that you pay attention to all that screaming before the throat goes numb and the voice goes hoarse.
I’m cheering my way towards detached, cheering and clapping and laughing (you would not believe how much laughter is hidden in between the syllables of this word), and I’m stripping away assumptions and conditions and pre-suppositions so the handful of people I’ve learned to vulnerably let in close will know I’m not closing up shop and skipping town with a giant “Gone Fishin” sign on my front door and a dark impenetrable silence to fill the void between us.
Sure, I didn’t have to pick a word. But I wanted to. I didn’t have to say yes to detached. But I wanted to. I didn’t have to write a blog post sharing any of this. But I wanted to. Because detached has a certain understanding of vulnerable. They hang out. In fact, you might call them kissing cousins. And if they want to flirt, I’m going to fan the flame of that romance and pull up a chair and get nice and cozy warm to that fire and snuggle in for the adventurous long haul of 2013.
Mandy,
““Attachment nails our desire to specific objects and creates addiction. Detachment is a liberation of those desires.”
-Addictions and Grace, Gerald May”
Detachment is part of the practice of my life and quite honestly, it feels unnatural and wrong. BUT I am noticing the longer that I practice it, the closer I am getting to finding the beauty it creates. I am not practicing detachment from my children but from expectations and outcomes. This practice actually allows me to be in relationship when previously I couldn’t.
Thank you for sharing and I am cheering with you and I am giddy to see what the practice of this word brings into your life.
LOVE love and LOVE to you!
Thank you Cynthia. <3
I was wondering what word would chose you this year. I almost didn’t chose one for myself, it felt trite and I thought about focusing on a phrase or getting one thing done but then my word and I couldn’t let it go either.
Detach from preconceived notions…detach from old goals and old ways….there’s a lot of good things from detach I think that your friends won’t have to fear.
Happy Detached New Year!
Thank you. What word picked you?
“become a collector of metaphor.”
wowee.
this post was a gift.
i love your unconventionality. oh so refreshing.
That’s a Ray Bradbury phrase. I think I picked it up from his book Zen In the Art of Writing.
Thankful you found “refreshment” here.
It’s quite rebellious if you think about it. That’s one facet that struck me. I’m pleased to know you are not closing up shop on your people.
Equally pleased to know more of the “why” behind this word, and even some of the “where.” 2013 will be quite an adventure!
Yes, rebellious. But you can’t flaunt a rebellious word very easily. It gets snagged on expectations and perceptions. But I’m going to give it a go – With the word, not the flaunting.
Detachment has been a way of learning for me the past few years. I learned a lot. It’s not abandoning or not caring, it’s more about not forcing life and not taking everything so personally. It’s a very good and healthy word!!
My word for 2013 is ABUNDANCE. Let’s see where it leads.
Thank you for seeing it as healthy. I love what you wrote about “not forcing life.” This feels so hopeful to me, and something I hope leaks out of this word into the cracks of me. I believe it already is.
Abundance makes me think of full and expectant and glowing. Excited for your 2013 path.
I love how brave and rebellious your embrace of this word feels. It feels so right and so you and I celebrate with you as you lean into the adventure of your word for this year. Thanks for sharing this post. I agree with Erica it was a gift
Thanks for seeing me and honoring my word. <3
I think there so much more to being detached, than the first glance at the word implies. It’s like realizing saying No is a gift. What you’ll detach yourself from this year will bring more meaning to the things you are able to cling to.
Love you lady.
I appreciate your interpretation here. It shed some light on some things that had been in the shadows. I’m eavesdropping on a conversation beside me in the coffee shop and a girl is saying she has to go home and clean the blinds today, and what a hideous job it is, but it has to be done. And I think your comment here helped clean some of the dust off the blinds of “detached.” <3
You always inspire me, my Magic Mandy … ♥
{AND, as you know, I completely adore this word!}
I love being dubbed “magic” mandy. <3
Oh your beautiful boldness always lifts me Mandy. Detached sounds like the most thrilling adventure for you. I cannot wait to see it {and you} blossom!
Muah!
if a part of you is screaming inside for some sort of permission, that you pay attention to all that screaming before the throat goes numb and the voice goes hoarse.
sigh….
this.
and why does it sometimes take so long? perhaps because we (i) tend to exhaust ourselves (myself) looking everywhere else but within, listening to every voice but our own, and is it because we are afraid of what we might find? when did we become so afraid of the truth?
when did we become so afraid of ourselves? <3
Ive lost my comment twice now.
Mostly i want to say that i have been tackled by ‘Detach’ over the past few weeks. I don’t know that i could list all the things i’ve detached from internally. All the unnecessary or contrived ideas, as well as some very long-held dreams and personal ideas of myself. It’s a kind of burning clarity. Hot and anxious at times, but also clear and sweet.
WRiting through some of this yesterday in light of the new weight of doctors and hospitals, this song came on.
“I have seen the others and I have discovered
That this fight is not worth fighting [..]
So take a shower and shine your shoes you got no time to lose
You are young men you must be living, [..]
go now you are forgiven’ –Dispatch, the General.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhWwmRGiV4o
Learning to detach from all the fights that aren’t worth fighting.
Love and strength and an ever-present hand to squeeze in the dark as we detach from all that we were never meant to carry.
I love that you see so clearly that the ever-present hand can in fact be present even in the midst of detaching. I feel this so succinctly.
And many of your words here got transposed into my art journal for safe keeping.
Off to listen to the song.