Desapego

Okay, so the title’s in Spanish because I seriously had (have) no clue how to say this in English. I had to look it up online, and I’m still not clear on how to say it. It’s “indifference, detachment, or coolness” according to the dictionary (and I checked more than one), but that’s not quite it. I guess detachment is more like it, though I think detachment sounds kind of negative while desapego is definitely positive. I definitely think I need to start speaking English more. And I’m going to start thinking about what this word means in English.

So I was visiting the Cuernavaca group last week, and met someone who has such similar issues to mine (sorry, not issues, opportunities for learning…we had a pretty good laugh about that, and I’m seriously trying to look at things from a different angle now). And we were talking about how we both travel a lot for work…and we both hate it. I mentioned that I have no idea what it is that I’m supposed to be learning from all this travel, and she said “desapego.” And I actually said, “no, I think it’s something else, because I’m totally over that.”

But am I?

I was just thinking back to when we left our Bariloche house in January, and I was really bummed about it. I actually walked through the whole house before we left and took pictures of all the rooms. And the view from downstairs (which was spectacular). I came across them the other day on my computer and looked through them and missed the house. Just last night I was thinking that last year we had already been in Bariloche for about two weeks this time of year. So I clearly still have issues with desapego. I can’t believe I actually thought I didn’t.

So now that I have this clear, I hope to be making some progress in this area and I can stop traveling so much!! (Though, it’s probably the other way around…I’ll make progress with the desapego and I won’t mind traveling so much. Or, who knows…) In any case, I’ve got it clear that the issue is desapego. Now, if I could only figure out how to say that in English!