The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

by Frank Ostaseski

If love is bountiful and endless, why then do we get caught up in scarcity, feeling that we must hold on to our beloveds so tightly? In part, it is because we confuse love and attachment. Attachment likes to impersonate love. It says, “I will love you if you give me what I need.” Love is focused on generosity; attachment is obsessed with getting needs met. Love is an expression of our most essential nature; attachment is an expression of the personality. Love engenders faithfulness, aligning with our values, moving with purpose; attachment clings in fear and grasps tightly to a particular end result. Love is selfless and encourages freedom; attachment is self-centered and engenders possessiveness. Attachment leaves scars. Love inclines us to gratefulness. Consider the experience of unhealthy attachment: It is tight, irritated, closed, fixed, and often compulsive. It creates an unwholesome dependency. We come to believe that our ability to feel pleasure and happiness, to have our needs met, is dependent on the words and actions of something or someone outside of ourselves. But love encompasses everything. We can love someone even if we don’t agree with them and even if we don’t like all their habits. My wife loves me, but she still gets annoyed with me when I forget to close the kitchen cabinets. Love is not blind to our day-to-day human challenges, yet it is not limited by them. Healthy attachment is essential in forming and sustaining human relationships, as in the attach...