Love and Attachment

“Knowing what will happen in the future, we are faced with a simple choice: either we resolve not to become attached to people and things, or we decide to love them even more fiercely.”
- Amélie Nothomb
The Character of Rain

While perusing the wonderful Commonplace Book at Whiskey River, I recently came across this quote and it’s been haunting me. I’ve never read The Character of Rain, though I looked up a plot summary; this is the statement of a French novelist, not a theologian. Nevertheless, we find echoes of the same idea – or is it a warning? – in both Buddhism and in the Gospels.

But is this, really, a simple choice between opposites, as Nothomb suggests? I’ve always felt that the concept of non-attachment to people, if not material things, was misunderstood in Christianity, and perhaps in Buddhism as well. (I wish someone who knows about Hinduism would comment on this.) And of course the quote can also be taken in a very secular way, leading toward either existential aloneness at one extreme, or total attachment to love-objects at the other.

Asceticism and renunciation of the world have both been seen as valid spiritual interpretations and life responses, and it’s true that both can lead toward greater knowledge of the self, and eventual shedding of ego. For me — presently living in the midst of marriage and other relationships, and consciously simplifying but not denying my relationship to things — reality seems far more nuanced. It comes down to facing the call to love one another deeply while also accepting that life is temporal. This compels me to try to do the work within myself that allows inner freedom, strength in solitude, and an eventual ability to let go of things, places, and people who have been, yes, fiercely loved – because life contains endings.

But what do you think? Is this a choice? And is genuine love the same as attachment?

My answer:  Love requires attachment, but is more than attachment.  It is on one hand a letting go of self for the sake of the other.  On the other hand it is the challenge of fully being and becoming oneself in the midst of closeness to another.  It is also a willingness to know and acknowledge our own shadow self as it becomes known to us in the relationship, to discipline its reach. 

There are “things” that function as a kind of cement in relationships, tokens of soul aspiration or hard earned comfort, beloved objects such as a good bed or a good book. 

Most of us have our collections of some sort.  We happily let it clutter up our lives.  For my husband it is his science fiction books and stamps.  I find the stamps everywhere, on his dresser, on his desk, on a corner of the shelf.  Sometimes, if it is a current and common stamp, I will whisk it away in a split second of cleaning.  But his drawers I do not touch, nor the top of his dresser:  those are his safe havens. 

For me it is the pictures, cookbooks and gardening manuals, and my old clothes.  I hang on to my clothes.  It is finally time to get rid of the clothes and I have been giving them away this year, practicing. 

When we survive one another and if we have the minds to do it, we will eventually have to let go of most of these objects:  one by one and carefully. 

My mother died last year.  In her small room in our home were objects she had kept from her own childhood, from our life together as a young family, cards from her friends and tokens of love from sisters:  quilts and embroidered doilies.   I keep many but have begun to pass some of them on with great care.  I have given her clothes away.  It was a joy, but not an easy one.  I found a fleece jacket that was left behind.  I tried it on and it fit, so I remember her warmth in its folds. 

Last summer I had a yard sale and gave several of her belongings away, especially the pots and pans and lamps and old tattered furniture pieces we had stored in the garage.  I marked the pile “free” and happily watched folks carry them to their cars and drive away.  I did not want to sell them.