Detach

The man chugged a small soda and thought things over.  He wanted to detach from his life.  But he was not sure how you went about doing that kind of thing. 

He thought about not paying his internet bill.  He had already stopped paying his phone bill.  Other things he had detached from included: a car, and most of his utility bills.

He was getting rid of things. 

Rather, you could say he was ridding himself of possessions.  Was he also ridding himself of an attachment to material things?  If you saw it that way, then you might say what he was doing was a good thing. 

Only he was not getting rid of material things because suddenly he did not want them.  He had not converted to Buddhism.  He was the kind of ordinary person who could tell you the difference between the iPhone 3g and the iPhone 3g (S). 

The man took a sip from his soda.

When the man drank, he drank from a straw. It was an idea that he got from his dentist. The dentist told him that he could limit the amount of tooth decay in his mouth if he drank from soda from a straw, rather than from straight from the bottle.

The man had no girlfriend.  So the man sat alone on his couch and drank his soda in a bottle from a straw.

The man did have a few friends.  But he pulled back from them.  He did not follow the successful career paths they chose.  He did not end up in a 3 bedroom brick town home.  He did not end up with any children either.

The people on TV, the advertisers, and the business executives in China who sold things to the discount stores he shopped at.   They all wanted him to want things. 

But they were the kind of people involved in making sure there were harmful particles in plastic baby bottles.  The man supposed doing such a thing was not good.  He was not an advocate of placing harmful chemicals in plastic baby bottles.  

The man would not buy plastic baby bottles.

He would not worry about warming the bottle of milk in the microwave.  He would not worry about testing the temperature of the milk on his skin.  He would not worry about how the chemicals from plastics were released at the cooking temperature his microwave oven produced. 

No bottles. No baby.  He saw no reason for a wife. 

Not having a wife was an advantage.  It meant he would not have to worry about all the decisions a wife would want him to be involved in.  He did not want to give his opinion on things like candles.

The man got rid of things, but it was not a moral decision.

The man was out of money. With less money, there were less things, and with less things, came less people, and with less people, there was less a reason to stay attached to the world they belonged to.

The man noticed how those things related to each other.  He did remark upon them.  He did not decide them for himself.  "It simply was the way things are." He thought to himself. 

The internet was his final link to the people in the world.

It was not always that way.  At first he used the internet to avoid people.  He used the internet to chew up time.  He used the internet to silence the mind's voice.

He was not certain how the voice in others minds worked.  His worked like the narrator in a film from the 1950's.  It told him things that he already knew.  It told him he stood in line for a movie.  It told him he was interested in seeing the movie.  It told him he was supposed to feel excitement.  But the voice never contained any excitement itself.  And he did not have any other voice. 

He never felt the excitement he saw the other people in lines at movies showing.  Maybe they were faking it too.  Or maybe their voices were not voices, but just the jumping up and down of excitement.   Like the big blasts of laughter he heard from boys dressed in costumes and make up that stood in line.

He could not be sure.  He felt funny asking other people if they felt the things they said they did.

He felt it was better to not ask.