Of Simplicity and Detachment

I think the best thing I learned these couple of years is to live a life of simplicity and detachment. Many associate detachments with apathy, detached of emotions and meaningful relationships with other people: being a robot. But actually detachment and apathy are very different things. I think it was through the words of dead Ottoman Muslim poets I discovered in Istanbul that I learn the true concept of detachment.

Detachment is being detached from the consequences of your thorough choices, from things that make you feel negative or sad, detachment from materialistic things in life that you must have in order to make you feel good everyday, or from the things that a person mistakenly say or do instead of the person itself. It is about letting go of utter control and feel okay with it.

Being detached, you will have peace of mind knowing that what is meant for you will come to you, and what is not meant for you will pass. When you are free of attachments, it gives you freedom and courage to venture out into the world, travel far and wide to see the world in search of meaning and marvel in the creation of the Creator. You will know that you will have nothing to lose with travelling. All the money you spent is replaced with experiences that stretch your mind wide, that it is impossible to return it to its original narrow dimensions.

Being detached, you will love and appreciate the people around you better. You love someone with no strings attached, not because of what the person has, what the person says or do, or what the person looks like. Attachment towards a person will only make you weak, you are hurt by the slightest negative remark, you become overly sensitive and you would stop loving someone just because the person said the wrong things in the heat of emotions. You will learn to love unselfishly.

For me detachment has a lot to do with simplicity, because when you live simply, you are not attached to many things. I have always been a devotee of simplicity, a minimalist. I am a minimalist in arts & designs that I like simple, sharp angled and crisp things. I like things that are simple but refined, like a piece of square block that looks insanely simple from afar but look closer and you see chiseled carvings that has a story to tell. It gives meaning. I clean and organize my room regularly and I found out it is a good way of avoiding your mind turning into a mess.I like to travel simply and lightly, so I don’t have to worry about having to stay in the smallest spaces for the night, worry about my belongings getting lost or having to move my luggage frequently from one place to another. 

Living simply does not diminish anything. The only things you diminish are clutters and rubbish in life, that in the end leaves more space to fill in things that has meaning. Heavy baggage, either physical or emotional, drains you. So live a simple and detached life, clear out all the physical and emotional clutter. You will feel happier, lighter, more creative, more energized, and you will realize sooner or later that your life becomes more fun!