Detachment

Liked this group on Facebook today. Here's the link to their website http://detachmentcorner.wordpress.com/. Have learnt some of life's toughest lessons in the past few years. I am sure they have been in my syllabus all along, only recently have become aware of them, conscious of them and learnt from them.

One aspect is friendship. Don't we all love a big friend list and people to call on and chat with. Or at least brag about it. I do, rather, I did. And of course, you can't be good friends with so many people all the time, at any given time. When I came to Belgium, I think I must have informed only a few close friends about our plans to move here. After coming here, it took me a while to make friends and I assumed they were my friends for life. Wrong again. I am not in touch with them anymore, we still have the same nos, mail ids, at least I do, the relationship was more than acquaintanceship but limited in its span.

We had some pleasant times together, was how my friend summed it. Things changed. Played havoc in my emotional readjustment for a while, and now I've come to terms with it. Everytime I started trying to analyse what went on, it would either end in me berating myself over some offense I may have done, or me ranting over how the other person does not deserve a nice person like me:) I think what helped me was to be detached, as if it was to happen this way, a movie scripted by another, I was just acting my part out.......and those were my lines, my actions,..............done with, finito, the end! The essence of the movie stays, images, faces, situations, laughs, emotions.....but once its finished playing you have to exit the theatre and catch the train back home.

In the span of last 2 years I have come across many new people. Wonder where they were hiding before? I am still my natural ebbulient self, open - inviting them to tea, or chatting on phone, connecting via social media. There is no holding back, only thing is I am detached. I don't label them as best friends, I never look beyond the now in relating to them, I don't have any expectations except we enjoy interacting when we do, otherwise what's the point. I would not label them as transitional friends, or friends of convenience, I am not one for small talk. Its just that I do not dwell on all said and unsaid conversations and inferences, saving a lot of my mental bandwith.

You know what, the friend bit, really that's the easiest. What I have found extremely difficult to handle is the extended family. Really, its funny when you think we meet for an average of a months time in a whole year but that is enough to make me practise detachment with a fervour before we meet them this December:) And I always thought detachment was a state opposite to attachment, think again.