Learning to Live Untethered
By: Guac Magazine Editors
Tags: Buddism, Travel, Retreats, Chiang Mai, Meditation

by: Zoe Johnsen

Joining locals in celebrating a Buddhist holiday at the village temple. Credit: Connor Flynn

Over the past year, one idea that I keep coming across is detachment from your identity. It seems paradoxical — aren’t we meant to “find ourselves,” discover our passions and develop our values, stand out as undeniably unique in the face of conformity? Why would we want to be transient beings, floating through life with no attachment to who we are?

I first stumbled across this concept, really considered it, during a meditation retreat. You might think of a hippie commune in the mountains, reminiscent of that infamous Mad Men finale, or of pristine white walls and middle-aged women trying to find inner peace, but the “retreat” of my experience was a humble open-air lodge and a few bamboo huts in a small village in northern Thailand. We did wear white flowy clothes, but meditated in the forest, to the sounds of cicadas, roosters, motorcycles revving and people arguing in the streets. We sat quietly with our minds four times a day, guided by a Buddhist monk in bright oranges robes, and followed by lessons on the religion — though to me it seemed less about religious doctrine and more about ways of seeing the world and yourself in it.

One of the main things I took out of his words was the harm that comes from attachment, especially to aspects of our own identity. Without getting too much into it, a key principle in Buddhism, something that everyone must accept, is annica, the fact that everything changes. Becoming too attached, then, sets one up for disappointment once that thing you’re clinging to is inevitably lost.

Our simple sleeping quarters, with tin roofs that amplified the sound of nightly thunderstorms.

A lot of times big ideas like this are meaningless and pass right through you unless you can relate to them in the present moment, to truly see them. Luckily, I was able to — I looked around me, at these thirteen other kids in their quickly-dirtying white clothes, and thought back to the “life rivers” we had shared with each other only a week ago. These rivers were crude, childish drawings of our life stories thus far, told with a quiet and raw honesty that didn’t match the short time we’d known each other.

Sitting now in a bamboo treehouse, swinging my legs over the edge, I had what I can only describe as an epiphany, noticing the common thread across our pitfalls. So many in our small group had struggled because we had become too attached to a part of our identity, based all our worth on it, only to have something change. However little, this change left us reeling, feeling lost in the world without that something to support us and to define us. Lost enough to make a radical change like stepping off the path expected of us, of everyone, leaving our known lives behind in an attempt to “find ourselves” again in a totally new part of the world.

Over the course of the next eight weeks I spent in Southeast Asia, I did slowly come to “find myself,” though with this idea of detachment in the back of my mind, guiding my growth. I noticed myself opening up, embracing changes and new experiences and all the unknowns around me. I found myself by letting myself be free of expectations — personal, of friends and family, of culture. There was no one that I needed to be, that I was supposed to be, and realizing that allowed for my true self to break through the person that I thought I was. It was less of a discovery and more unearthing what had always been there, then allowing that exposed core of myself to blossom and grow towards whatever called her.

I reveled in the different lives and possibilities I encountered, from the stories told by our Laotian trail guide, to the eccentric and careening lives of my program leaders in their 30 short years, to window-seat daydreams of all the different ways my own story could go.

Papae Retreat, rainy and a vibrant green, set in the forests north of Chiang Mai.

I’d like to think that coming home and being put so easily back into that box of expectations is just a bump in the road, though I do feel myself fighting those intrinsic ideas of limitation too frequently. However, I’m also reminded of my past self and joys every so often, brought back to the inspiration I first felt in that bamboo treehouse.

I accumulated a huge number of travel books when I first came home, walking out of the library with foot-tall stacks almost weekly. One book in particular served as the first real reminder, urged me to solidify my thoughts into a permanent mindset, a view of life as impermanent. I felt it again a few days into the new year, while driving towards the Chicago sunset with the life-long friends I’d made on my 10-week trip. It’s our first time together since being in an entirely different world, one that at this moment I’m reminded wasn’t just a fever dream. For some reason it comes again after a hike on a cold afternoon in March, and I feel like standing in the middle of the road arms out and screaming, a smile on my face, infectious in the way that I just can’t stop it from coming.

College presents a unique challenge, though walking above towering gorges does help somewhat, sparks that feeling of spontaneity and, honestly, joie de vivre. The philosophy of detachment follows me here too, into a seminar on Buddhism, as anatta: deconstruction of the self. Weekly writing exercises on its value remind me that I’ll never forget it. On those bad days we all have, feeling stuck and limited and near-paralyzed, I try to remind myself that my present situation is one choice in a life of a million choices, one moment of a thousand moments. Nothing is the be-all end-all, and I wish for everyone to know that, myself, friends I’ve just made, strangers I pass on the sidewalk. It’ll work out, and if it doesn’t, there’s another path. There are seven billion different ways to live, and I bet another billion beyond that. The only certainty is that nothing is certain — but I’ve found that’s the beauty in it all.