We’re not short of chances to earn or spend money in ways that make life better.
We’re not short of superb bonding opportunities.
We just choose to use our resources elsewhere.
We choose poorly.
We need to improve not our circumstances, or our ‘selves’, but our choosing.
…is more a characteristic of a way of living than it is a definition of static state, choice, or even series of choices. It’s the cultivation of a dynamical system for countering the equally dynamical system of self-deception, and consequently for affording a flowing, flourishing, meaningful life.
‘Wisdom,’ wrote Socrates, ‘begins in wonder.’ The sort of wonder that opens you up to the possibility that aspects of your worldview, however well-engrained, and however well-enforced by internal and external guardians, could be bullshit. The sort of wonder that upon being open like this is motivated to challenge previously jumped-to conclusions, and, when they’re found wanting, to aspire to find a better way.
I used to think that gambling addicts ‘lost control’ when they gambled excessively. But the addicts in the book use machines as a way to gain control in their lives. In front of a machine, the world is simple: they place bets and lose a little bit of money on each turn. The gamblers are in control of this machine world. It is the world away from machines where the prospect of losing control in frightening ways looms. Away from the machines, life is long and full of terrors.
The most common misreading of ‘attachment’ is to believe it’s about compulsive desires. It’s not. It’s about a narrowing of your vision.
If you misunderstand the problem, your solution is bound to fail, and you won’t know why. So you’ll keep trying the same dumb thing over and over again, wasting your money, your time, your energy, and therefore your life, in the process… none the wiser why you never became what you could have become.