Attachments and blogging

Remember how I wrote a blog about forming attachments to things? And how bad you feel when you lose or break those things?

One thing you can get too attached to is your own blog. Why am I thinking about this? Because Harmaceutical wrote a blog today about the many rumors that have been swirling about the possible demise of 360 blogging. I heard these rumors months and months ago. I was visiting one of Yahoo 360’s “support” pages/blogs back when I was complaining endlessly about the fact that spammers had taken over a Yahoo Group I belong to (absolutely no help was ever received by the way). Back then, I would check the comments on those blogs and people kept asking Yahoo “What’s the story with Yahoo 360 still being Beta?”, “Are you shutting down the blogs?”, “Will you tell people before you shut down the blogs?”, and “Are you going to start charging for this service?”

To my knowledge, no one ever answered these questions.

I read Harm’s blog today and thought “Yup, I’ve heard that too.” Then, I read how he took the big giant step of purchasing a domain name for himself and I thought “Hey! I did that too!” Because that’s exactly what a did a little while ago. Then, I called up a good buddy of mine who is way more savvy with programming, and graphics, and whatnot, and things of that nature. And I asked him to do a couple of things for me. And I bookmarked this excellent blog about putting together your own website. The theme of this blog entry was “How to Leave Blogger”, but I think the tips can apply to anyone interested in starting their own site. It relies on tools such as WordPress to help you through the process. Some folks may want to start their own site from scratch, but there is no way I could do something like that unless I commissioned someone to create the whole site for me, and I don’t know if I want to spring for that much quite yet. Maybe, but maybe not.

Anyway, as a warning, I suppose – I find it interesting that these rumors of Yahoo 360 switching to another platform, or totally shutting down are still simmering. I sometimes start my blog entries in Word first – mostly because I have to leave the blog, come back and finish it, and Yahoo doesn’t have a good way to “save” your blog entry. So, I know some of my longer blogs are saved. And, I’ve thought about the possibility that the rest of them could go “Poof!” at the whim of the Yahoo string-pullers. I’ve taken steps. Don’t know if it will ever go anywhere past Yahoo, but yes, I’ve thought about it.

p.s. – I think all these preparations mean I’m too attached to my blog, but I’ll deal with that later.

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Attachment and Good Examples

I think that, sometimes, I become too attached to things. Things, such as ideas that I have. And things, such as physical objects. How do I know the second is true?

 

I have a house-full of “stuff” in Maui, half a room-full of “stuff” at my mom’s, and an entire rented storage container of “stuff” waiting for me (plus one couch that my future MIL (mom-in-law) is holding for me). Yeah….it’s hard for me to let go of stuff.

 

The Dalai Lama, on his own website, says the following about attachment:

 

According to Buddhist psychology, most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities. The pursuit of the objects of our desire and attachment involves the use of aggression and competitiveness as supposedly efficacious instruments.

 The Dalai Lama talks about attachment quite a bit. I should think about it more myself. I think too much attachment to stuff, including my own brain-full of notions, is sometimes detrimental.

 

Why do I think about this now? My nephews were playing in my mom’s house tonight before dinner and broke one of Mom’s Hummels. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but my mom is not one of those people that has dozens of Hummels lined up on every inch of flat surface in her house. She only has a small handful, and two of them were from her mother. It was one of those moments where I could see it happening across the room and knew there was no way I could leap across a table, two chairs, and a piano bench in time to stop it.

 

It was a sad thing. But you know, I think I was more upset about it than Mom was. Maybe because of her typical low-key reaction to things. Maybe because, as she said later, “There’s nothing you can do about it.” And maybe because Mom just doesn’t get as attached to “stuff” as I do.

 

My nephews were upset also. But what happened was truly an accident, and they weren’t really playing in a manner that is not allowable in the house. It was just an accident. And here’s where a good example came in. My Big Sis handled it like a pro. Which, hey, I think she is. She’s been a mom long enough to know when something bad is an accident versus when she needs to really get to the bottom of what her kids are doing. Despite having something hot on the stove, and having me sitting on the floor lamenting the headless Hummel, she handled the situation calmly and finished making dinner. She knew the boys understood something wrong had happened – there was nothing she could add to that feeling. And she knew nothing had happened out of ill intent. She didn’t lash out at the boys, or even at me for sitting on the floor like a lump. Our mom didn’t lash out at anybody or even ask who was responsible or how it happened. She just said “Well, let’s glue it back together.” And I think both moms were very Dalai-Lama-like tonight by their patience, calm, and compassion. The moment of stunned silence around the broken figurine probably gave my sister enough time to say a prayer to help her. A few extra moments gave me enough time to try and re-engage my oldest nephew who still looked crestfallen about the whole thing. I wish I had been able to gather myself as quickly as my Big Sis did (although she did scald herself cooking, so maybe she wasn’t as composed as she looked). But, I’m trying.

Tonight, Mom and I watched the news about a big fire up near Lake Tahoe. By 11:00 p.m., over 150 homes had been destroyed in this fire. I thought how much worse that would feel than just losing one family keepsake. But then I thought about how miserable I would feel if my own home were completely destroyed. While I don’t think I’d be too off the mark to be sad about something like that, I still need to learn more about letting go of some of my attachments. I won’t even get into the problems that come about because I’ve become too attached to an idea in my head. It’s generated more arguments (many with my patient Sweetie) than I can count. And it often comes down to, I need to let things go sometimes. Hopefully, with more study, lots more prayer, and more good examples in my life, I can improve on that. Maybe. Someday?

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