Is having attachment issues an issue?
I was surfing through my YouTube this morning when I found this one video talking about why we humans are so attached to our things. Watching it made me realize one thing, I have huge attachment issues.
“Things you own end up owning you.”
— Tyler Durden
From small notes passed during a lecture asking for lunch menus to birthday cards given by my brother when he was 3 or 4, I have everything kept with me neat and clear in two cardboard boxes painted with blue, black, and cloudy drawings. It's not like I had no clue, I always knew that I have attachment issues that too not with humans, it's my belongings I am more attached to. Be it my room, books, notebooks, pens, even small notes, and whatnot, I have always kept them closer. Not letting a single soul touch them till I allow them to. Of course, for this behavior, people did call me weird and arrogant but then I realized that I am not the only one. They too were like me.
Everyone loves keeping their precious to themselves. Don’t they? For most, it was selective, their list of precious items. Whereas in my case, I had a long long neverending list. Sounds weird but it's normal in our world. Watching that video earlier I learned that we humans began this strong feeling of belongingness since our toddler times. You might not remember but maybe you do might have seen toddlers around you? (I am taking it as a yes) How babies cry when they are not given their wished stuff like toys and other items they feel attracted to? But have you keenly noticed how close or let me use a strong word, how ‘possessive’ they are towards the items they have been handed over? Very much, I can say from my point of view as a sister with one baby brother and six little first cousins.
We too are no different from those babies or shall I say we have been developing this feeling of possession since kids. Be it of a thing or a person and it grows as we grow up too. But, what makes that feeling grow more is the environment and company that we grew up in. Jean Piaget, a founding father of child psychology found that our sense of ownership emerges incredibly early.
So, why are we so clingy?
There's a phenomenon in psychology known as the endowment effect. This is where we value items more highly as soon as we start owning them. Remember those beautiful play cards we bought as a kid from nearby stores? Or those newly released books or comics books we all have been waiting for months? How carefully we would open the plastic over it and turn the pages like a pro-Britisher (I know there's no such term but it's the accurate word to express now). I wouldn’t let my friends touch them at all. Not even the closest one, thinking it might ruin them. This is how clingy and careful we were towards our belongings as a kid. The moment it was in our hands, it became ours. The feeling of ownership.
I guess for me my feeling or sense of ownership is pretty high. Not just with items, I have noticed this with my write-ups too. I have got so many write-ups, stories, series chapters, and small quote-poetry types written down all over the place but it takes a lot of time for me to be able to share them. Might sound weird to many but it's really hard to let go of something I worked so hard on. Write-ups, blogs, stories, etc aren’t just a bunch of words, they are feelings and emotions of mine wrapped up in these fancy (& non-fancy) words to you to enjoy over. I am just so attached to them like my belongings to let them go this soon.
So, if you ever borrow a pen of mine, make sure you return it in one piece as soon as you fulfill your purpose with it! Or else it will end up making me uneasy… :)
Hope you had a good time reading and might have understood my point of view as well here. Or much better, related to it! ;)
