Sent as Attachments

Attachments

Its not actually disturbing or a mystery to me, and yet there is something about attachments to things that bind my thoughts to it.

Of course it is all too human to have attachments to things, and it doesn’t mean that a person who is such is materialistic. Technically perhaps, yes, I am “materialistic” in some way, but I am all too sure that is not a bad thing.

Of course, how I wish I could say that it is a happy thing…

I fully understand that my attachment to these objects stems from the simple truth that these very objects are in more ways than one attached to another person, and thus serves as a bond that would always remain as long as thought can remember. Memories somehow are not enough, as I have discovered. There is something about trying to recollect memories that somehow I am not too sure if they are really fragments of my memories or just plain dream pieces of my desires. And so since memory is not enough, I hold on to these objects, to these things.

And I guess I should also say that these objects also hold me onto something.

I know that things and objects are meant to fade away, as all things that begin are destined to end. And yet, I am somehow caught in the middle of the door: outside is the place to let go and inside is, well as you have guess, the place where we should keep ourselves, of staying, of not letting go.

There are a couple of objects that I value, whether they still serve their purpose or not: letters that spoke of a true love before they became lies, an ordinary paper bag made priceless by someone’s handwritten message, empty pens that I have used all these years, and photographs. Of course, there are those that are yet serving their purpose, and it is actually the lost of such things that haunt me somehow.

And so, a couple of days ago, I asked a good friend for an opinion concerning my attachment to things. I know I am being honest when I say that I am worried that these objects that I value might be taken for granted by those who hold them now. I just don’t know if I am being perfectly honest, but I am honest about my worries. My attachments to these objects makes me want that they stay with me until their last moments, a thought that I find tragic and poetic considering I can see myself only with myself until my own final moments.

My friend told me that I should believe in people, that those that I value will also be valued by those who hold them now. I wanted to believe that, but then I just cant forget that once upon a time, I entrusted a compilation of my earliest works to someone who brought it with her half a world away and ended up telling me that she threw them away.

The works in those compilations are still priceless to me even as they are lost. No, not because they were great works but because though they were mediocre, they were parts of me, attachments of my own person, of my own soul, if I can say that I have a soul.

But then again, I guess the real lesson about attachments is found in the great lessons that I taught myself:

To be attached, one must also learn to let go.