Knowing that you have to cut your emotional ties to the past so you can form new ones is painful. Not even ties. Desires. “Those things that I wanted so much, that meant so much to me. I have to let them go to clear my head so I can see what the world has to offer.” It feels like betrayal. I wanted those things because they held the potential to fill certain needs, and those needs can be filled other ways, yes. But the desires took specific shapes, had specific targets, and those desires are a part of me. And some of them seemed to define me in part for a time in ways I was very fond of. So it’s like cutting a piece of myself loose. The mechanism that transforms desire into regret just doesn’t seem to exist in me.
I should write this stuff down. I bet a person could get laid, spouting that crap. It reminds me of the central fallacy of Zen Buddhism. In the absence of free-will, subsuming yourself in the process of living your own life gets reduced to “be the ball.” Or maybe it reminds me that I live in a black and white world. Doesn’t matter much, I suppose.
