Our tendency is to think that we must be either attached strongly to an idea or detached from that idea entirely. Buddhism proposes a different option: We can be non-attached to our ideas. Without dropping our labels and concepts completely, we loosen the death grip we have on them. When someone attacks a belief or opinion we hold, we can see that they’re attacking the idea, not us directly. When we’re nonattached to our ideas, they no longer own us—we own them.
