attachments

It’s always the little things that get me. I’m doing fine, going along on my merry way when wham something happens and a ton of crazy life questions pop up.

It dawned on me I have a thing for mugs but not just any ol’ coffee mugs the ones in MY cupboard. I believe it all started with the white mug my Grandpa Harms and I used to both love. I have it now, it’s tucked away and we both said it made the water taste funny and I LIKED IT. I also have a big huge mug my parents gave me that has dopey and the seven dwarfs on it, a mug with cats from my Grandma Harms, a beauty that my friend Christie gave me and finally the Steamboat mug that is no more.

Tonight I broke it. In it’s final moments it held coffee. It was significant to me only because it reminded me of a specific journey I took to Steamboat. On this particular trip I had a wonderful time in solitude, which I think is a journey that I’ve learned to appreciate over the last few years. The mug was a reminder of the larger things I’m fond of or in other words, attached to.

It brings me to ponder a larger topic, our attachments. It's a mug. It’s just a mug, but I was sad. Is it bad to be attached to such things? A specific mug, a specific place, a specific memory???? The eight bucks I'll pay to get another one won't replace those. There are many philosophies out there and some strive to ween people from attachments, so that we don’t suffer when things are gone. But what if the suffering is good for us? What if the absence of something makes us appreciate what we have even more?

If we don’t have attachments how can we truly appreciate something? With so much of the world in the gray area of isn’t it kind of nice to have some black and white? Some concrete things that we LOVE? The world is changing all the time. I think it’s nice to appreciate the beauty of some things that stay the same. It's not wrong to be attached to them. Its a complete cop out not too get close to something because you don't want to feel bad when it's not around. I think learning to deal with loss is an important aspect in life we can only truly appreciate when something we really love leaves us(and I'm not talking about my mug anymore.)

Theodore Roosevelt said, "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." I believe the same is true for attachments.

I know it was just a mug, but I liked it.