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The Introverted Thinker Newsletter #017
Welcome back, everyone!👋
A lot of you here are new and joined during my extended break from writing, so I welcome you. This newsletter is about sharing things that are important/interesting to me and simply showing a little insight into my life and my writing journey.
Brief catchup incoming: I recently got back from a 6-week backpacking trip around Europe visiting Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Turkey. I will be sharing stories from my recent travels in upcoming newsletters.✈️
Anyway, here is a little something. I’m going to keep it simple, not plan too much, and just write whatever comes out of my head. I wrote about my BIGGEST lesson of 2021, a book recommendation, and an interesting philosophy video I came across.✍️
Why Attachment Is The Root Of All Suffering🚶♂️
A phrase that has echoed throughout my mind for the last year.
Our existence is dictated by the degree to which we suffer, and the degree to which we are content. Happiness and sadness, yin and yang. Most of the time, these forces are complementing each other rather than working in opposition, creating a destructive yet harmonious balance that we call life.
How can one enjoy the peaks of life without ever having suffered? Would you be thankful for living in a mansion on a Caribbean Island if you had never seen or even heard of poverty?
No is the answer. This level of luxury would be your baseline and to you, it wouldn’t seem like anything special.
When I was traveling with nothing but a bag on my back for 6 weeks, moving city every 3-4 days, I finally understood two things. Firstly the feeling of not being tied down was liberating. I felt like it was an insight into what life would be like if attachment didn’t exist. Secondly, it made me grateful for the tiniest things like having a warm shower, or my own bed with my own pillow, because traveling on a budget as an 18-year-old isn’t exactly the most luxurious experience!
This experience led to a lot of reflection. And this reflection made me connect the dots to past experiences and truly grasp on an emotional level how relevant this quote is to me.
Diving Deeper
“Attachment is the root of all suffering” - Buddha
This quote has lived in the back of my mind for a while now. I always knew about it but didn’t know exactly where it came from. I just knew it resonated with me. So who knew I’d be starting the year with a quote from Buddha out of all people? Not me.
I’ve noticed in the past year that almost all my negative experiences were related to this emotion of becoming attached to something.
If you think about it, nothing is ever permanent. Attachment by nature leeches onto things as if they were going to be there until the end of time. Human nature, the universe, and everything in it are in a constant flux of change.
To wholeheartedly become fixated and attached to a certain person, way of life, or even level of comfort and routine goes against human nature.
It is rooted within our primal psyche to always be on the move. We developed as hunter-gatherers. Making temporary settlements, using all possible natural supplies of an area, then moving on.
This concept seems so abstract in our world of modernity, but to me, it makes more sense than anything. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t like/want to live in the typical fashion of modern man.
I’d rather be dependant on the land, live in nature, and be fully self-sustainable.
My point is essentially this. The universe flows in a specific way that is in constant change. From one second to another, nothing ever remains the same. The premise of a stationary state does not exist in my eyes. The change of time reveals this in the most obvious ways.
By desiring and clinging to things, you are directly going against the forces of the universe. You are trying to remain stagnant in a world of constant change. Negative emotions subsequently happen because you are going in direct opposition to nature.
Here is a Taoist quote to end things.
“Do not struggle. Go with the flow of things, and you will find yourself at one with the mysterious unity of the universe.” — Chuang Tse
Some extras for you to read:
If that last section about Taoism interested you, I wrote a whole article on Taoism, and its one of my personal favorites: 3 Underrated Taoist Principles That Have Simplified My Existence
My first post on Medium in over 6 months! Check it out: I Turned Paradoxical Overthinking Into A Superpower
A Book I Read Last Week📚:
Well, I haven’t written a newsletter in around 6 months, and it’s safe to say I’ve read a fair number of books since then. But to save everyone time I’ll just talk about the book I read last week.
Into Thin Air: A personal account of disaster on Everest by Jon Krakauer
This book was a journey, literally. It is about the author’s experience climbing Mount Everest during one of the worst storms in its history. It was one of the most costly expeditions of Mount Everest in terms of lives lost.
I decided to pick up this book whilst I was on my 6-week trip because I had been spending a lot of time in the mountains in the Dolomite region of Italy, and also in Triglav National Park in Slovenia. And I love the mountains and the idea of exploring and hiking through them. So this book seemed perfect.
As you can see I love the mountains. Here’s a quote from the book.
“Of the six climbers on Hall’s expedition who reached the summit, only Mike Groom and I made it back down: four teammates with whom I’d laughed and vomited and held long, intimate conversations lost their lives. My actions—or failure to act—played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris. And while Yasuko Namba lay dying on the South Col, I was a mere 350 yards away, huddled inside a tent, oblivious to her struggle, concerned only with my own safety. The stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden self-reproach”
Here’s an idea of how the expedition went and the effect it had on the author.
Overall a good book with an amazing storyline and thrill of adventure, however, it was poorly executed at times. 3/5 stars.
Something Interesting I Came Across
Youtube: The Priceless Benefits of not Belonging
This philosophical video outlined an interesting perspective of how not belonging to a certain societal norm/group actually has its benefits. He outlines points about:
Achieving ultimate freedom without reliance upon others
The cultivation of universal love and how groups breed separation.
All in all a good philosophical exploration of what it means to be an individual. And this is something I feel strongly about as the concept of Self Reliance popularised by Ralph Waldo Emerson is so important to me, even having a tattoo that symbolizes it.
There we have it, the first newsletter edition of the year, and many more to come! We aren’t stopping this time!
I hope you all enjoyed the read and I’m always grateful for those who make it this far down. I had fun writing this.
Enjoy your week!❤️