This is my favorite mug. Like most things I value, I get nervous when I use it because my brain immediately tells me, “Here’s something that can go wrong (insert distressing image of mug crashing to the ground and breaking into pieces).” Well, thank you for that reminder, brain (rolling my eyes).
After my grandpa died in 2012 (just two weeks after his 100th birthday!), I found this mug in his kitchen cabinet. I was immediately drawn to it, but I HATE when I love breakable things because, well, I’m afraid I’ll break them! Despite knowing that every time I use this mug, I’d have to deal with the uncomfortable thought and image of breaking it, I took it into my home anyway. I don’t use it always, but when I do, I feel warmth and comfort (followed by the fear that I’ll ruin it, of course).
The reality is that one day, the mug might break. Maybe I’d cry, and surely, I’d feel guilty. However, when I really think about it, the mug itself is a neutral stimulus. I’m the one who applied the emotional significance to it- the memories, love, sense of family and safety. I think we all do this. We all go through this process of applying emotional significance to rather neutral objects. We then get attached to the objects- for better or worse- and overtime, we go through many iterations of our own story in relation to that object (or person, or event). For example, I’m pretty attached to my story of how cold weather = terrible, but feeling cold is just a sensation. I’m the one making it terrible (or usually my brain is doing that judgment so quickly that I don’t realize I have a choice in the matter).
Even when attachments seem pleasant, they can still cause suffering (addiction would be a great example of this!). In a psychologically-informed yoga workshop I recently taught on finding freedom through non-attachment, I realized just how much suffering I create in my own life, ON MY OWN (with the help of my problem-solving AKA problem-creating brain).
So, here I am drinking coffee out of my grandpa’s mug and with every sip, I notice the thought, “What if this shatters?” My automatic, attached story almost prevents me from picking it up again. I wonder, what else am I afraid to do just because I love it? What else am I avoiding out of fear that I’ll ruin it?
If the mug shatters, the story could be that I should have been more careful, that it feels like losing my grandpa all over again, that I did something bad, that I’m bad…or maybe there could be no story. Maybe the mug is just a structure that holds my coffee, but my love, memories, and emotions don’t live in that, and certainly, don’t shatter with that. Those things are in my heart, not my head.
