The hidden cost of attachment.
How big is your tab?
Last month, I wrote about my visit to my storage unit to grab a few pairs of shoes, and how the addition of those few pairs of shoes to my intentionally very minimal daily rotation of clothing created more choice, requiring me to make more decisions and increasing the amount of noise in my signal-to-noise ratio.
After this experience, I was inspired to start cutting down and eventually eliminating the storage unit entirely.
I revisited the unit a week later, got rid of about half of its contents, and downsized to a smaller, cheaper unit.
When I return next, I’ll get rid of the remaining contents.
In going through it, I couldn’t help but think about how much I’ve paid to store those things over the last two and a half years in comparison to their actual value, and more importantly, their value to me.
At the time, those things seemed important and valuable.
But after some prolonged detachment from them, I couldn’t even remember what was in there, and when I saw, I found myself thinking, “I can’t believe I paid that much to keep…this!”
Each of us is holding onto things in our lives that are no longer relevant, and bearing a hidden cost of this attachment daily, whether financial or otherwise.
For example, holding onto a grudge stores those emotions in our body as accumulated stress, which quietly eats away at our adaptation energy every day, making us less capable of dealing with new demands and therefore more susceptible to incurring new stress.
In Art Deco-era India, monkey trappers would trap monkeys by hiding sweets in holes in the ground. The monkeys would reach in and clench their fists around the sweets, and then be unable to free themselves because they refused to unclench their hands to let go of them. The monkeys would be captured, just sitting there trying to get the sweets out of the hole instead of forsaking the sweets and fleeing for the vast freedom of the jungle, and ultimately, their lives.
Vedic Meditation teaches us to let go, first inside of meditation, and then by extension, outside.
If you’ve already learned, you’re likely finding yourself letting go of more and more irrelevant “sweets” in your life and feeling lighter and lighter each day.
If you haven’t, you’re likely feeling the incremental weight of more and more accumulated stress piling up each day.
And if you fall into the second category, why draw it out any longer? While we value money, those who prioritize short-term material wealth over personal transformation may want to consider the long-term cost of a lifetime of classes, programs, memberships, retreats and other attempts to feel better alongside the compounding cost of missed sleep, failed relationships, and declining physical and mental performance, as we continue to rack up more stress each day.
While it may seem like you’re saving money by not learning Vedic Meditation, what is holding onto that money costing you?
Do the math, and you’ll find that in the long run, the cost of not learning dwarfs the relatively meager course contribution.
And the longer you remain attached to saving a small amount in the short term, the more that long-term cost compounds each day.
Just like my storage unit.
Don’t get caught with your hand in a hole, clenched around something that may seem valuable today but will ultimately cost you vastly more in the long run.
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday August 18 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or use the below links to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your calendar.
iCal / Google Calendar / Office 365 / Outlook / Outlook.com / Yahoo
Music today is There’s More To Life Than This (Live Version) from the one-and-only Björk’s debut album, hilariously entitled Debut. If only someone had told the poor monkeys.