mongooseblog

Detachment comes easily when you’ve had practice. On the sidewalk, in a city of eight million, you would expect to feel some sort of connection with the ones you pass. It’s the opposite. The sidewalk is for getting from point A to point B. No time for pleasantries. No time for the homeless or the panhandlers you walk by. No time for the tourists who thoughtlessly crowd the sidewalk, the lollygaggers, the ones with their heads craned skyward, impeding your progress. Subway trains may consist of ten cars of small communities, but they really are just carriers for a thousand single-existence bubbles. The man loudly berating his companion across from you is but background noise, as are the Chinese immigrants who troll the subways hawking their noisemaker cellphone toys and their flashing yo-yos and the representatives of various homeless organizations peddling sandwiches and asking for donations. Detachment comes easily when you’ve had practice.

Detachment and disinterest.

It’s hard to be disinterested when a rare opportunity comes your way, an opportunity full of promise but rife with risk. The disinterest is what spares you the torment of endlessly running risk analysis scenarios in your head only to come up with a single question that is unanswerable until you decide to bite the bullet: “Is it worth it?” Disinterest nullifies the potential disappointment. Enh, you say, I didn’t care anyway.

But you care. Ever since the opportunity presented itself, you’ve been preoccupied with it, weighing the cost against the benefits. That’s what makes the opportunity rare rather than commonplace. It bestows value upon the transaction. The potential payoff is incredible, but the potential loss is similarly just as large.

You may think that God has been dropping you hints, but God also gave you that strong pessimism–that pessimism that leads to detachment and disinterest. In which do you believe more: fate, luck, or that your negativism is a true reflection of reality?