The assuredly empty self is filled with contents which enslave it just because it does not know or accept them as contents. […] The man-created world of objects has drawn into itself him who created it and who now loses his subjectivity in it. He has sacrificed himself to his own productions. But man still is aware of what he has lost or is continuously losing. He is still man enough to experience his dehumanization as despair. He does not know a way out but he tries to save his humanity by expressing the situation as without an ‘exit.’
Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages, leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you.
No matter how much we’d like to, we can’t stop time or the changes it brings. We can’t ‘rewind’ our lives to an earlier point or ‘fast-forward’ to some future place. But we can learn to accept impermanence, make friends with it, and even begin to consider the possibility of change as a type of mental and emotional bodyguard.