I try to practise detachment. This is because those which we are deeply attached to are transient. People we love. Other living things. Pets for instance. The dog that you picked up from the road perhaps died despite your desperate efforts and all you can recall is the haunting, heart-rending image of it weakly wagging its tail as it looked up at you with those expectant eyes when you fed it. Or the scrawny cat which strayed into your existence when on a rainy day, abandoned and alone, it mewed outside your door.

I don’t believe in keeping animals in the house because first of all I think they belong to the great outdoors and also because I have an aversion to the idea of close proximities between humans and beasts. Birds should fly in the sky and live in trees. They should not be cooped up in cages. Even dogs and cats ought to live in separate spaces. The age-old and ubiquitous practice of domesticating them and keeping them in one’s home, especially if these houses are tiny flats, seems wrong to me. Yes, the puppies and kitties are very cute and lovable but they need a lot more than the little space that you can offer them so that they can run around freely.

But one’s aversions and ideas get thrown out the window when life throws situations at you, treacherously trying to trip your endeavour at practising detachment.

The practice of detachment of course has to do with self-preservation. In order to numb oneself against the pain of losing loved ones. But life is such that there is no escaping from feeling the depths of despair because loss hits you unexpectedly, and quite literally, out of the blue.

Like a couple of birds that had built a nest in a nearby tree and I witnessed how it reared its young and how on a windy day, as the fledgling learnt to fly, it fell to the ground and its life was whiffed out. The affection that you felt for the birdie had crept in inadvertently, so insidiously that even I did not know it. The hollow feeling of loss seeped in treacherously and no matter how much you tried to shake it off or erase it from your memory, you kept remembering the chirps of sheer happiness that the little bird emitted when its parents fed it.

No, I do not actually think that it is possible to inure oneself against the pain of loss in life. Practising detachment is futile. Unless one renounces the world and heads to the mountains for lifelong meditation.

However, I deduced recently that perhaps one CAN live in the mundane world and actually attach oneself to the transient without falling prey to the pain of loss. But that transience would necessarily have to be in the realm of the abstract. In the realm of ideas.

And identified the one thing that can offer enduring happiness though transient. And that is the sound of the song. Music. Melody. It fleets through time, yes, even when you play recorded versions in loops. Yet the emptiness it leaves behind in the end is that which is filled with happiness.

The theme of today’s page is the joy of music. Even reality TV has tapped into its power to keep people drawn and audiences rapt.

To the readers, I say, no you do not need to practise detachment. Do attach yourself to the transient. But let it be that transience which is timeless.