Learning to detach – From the book “Tuesdays with Morrie”

¡Hola Amigos!!! Hoping you all are safe and doing well. Last week, I was reading this wonderful book “Tuesdays with Morrie” by the author Mitch Albom. The book is about sharing some really great and deep pearls of wisdom about life, by a dying man to one of his old students Mitch. They met each other every Tuesday, and Morrie shares his powerful words of wisdom and some life lessons. I don’t know if you have already read this book or not but if not, I will strongly recommend you all to read this. I believe you will find it astonishing. My today’s post is to share my feelings or can say a few thoughts on one of the topics discussed in this book “Detachment”.

On one of the Tuesdays, while discussing emotions, Morrie told Mitch that how and why learning to detach is important. However, Morrie was the person who always talk about experiencing every moment in life even good or bad. But, this time he was talking differently. He is saying to detach yourself from the experiences. It was strange for Mitch so, when Mitch gets confused about this he asked to explain and in reply Morrie said:

“Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it .”

“Take any emotion–love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the
pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.”

How thoughtful it is, no? This whole conversation gave me a reason to stop and think about what exactly Morrie is trying to teach here. We all have a habit of holding onto our past, our problems, pains, grief, regret, anger with friends, family, or any other beloved, but happiness. isn’t it? I feel that. If we go through a rough time we keep holding onto the pain of it and stay in grief for long. but oppositely, if we go through any happy moment we live that moment for the time and then we move on. Why does it take so long to move on from the pain like it is not going to end ever? I think because we don’t allow ourselves to move on. we do not allow ourselves to experience any other emotions when we are depressed. But, on the other side, we let our happiness be compromised with any other negative emotion so easily. If you are happy and someone calls you bad, you immediately get angry or sad but if you are sad and someone tells you nice things, then you do not get in a happy mood. I am sure if you take a pause and give it a thought, you will find the same.

If we hold back any of the emotions we would never be able to walk ahead in life. Life goes on and so we should. Things happen, good, bad and it keeps coming and going away. If today is bad, it is ok to feel sad, to cry, to feel pain but holding it till tomorrow makes your tomorrow bad too. I don’t know much about you but for me, I really need to practice learning to detach from not only bad emotions but good too.

I hope you will find this helpful too. Looking forward to your thoughts on this or any other topic from the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” if you have read it already. Have a great day every day!

Morrie and Mitch – Source: google images