Detachment is liberation and a fundament for enlightenment. Nothing is permanent, everything changes and change becomes the only constant. If you try to fight the natural flow of change unfolding you’ll be left imprisoned and drained. Your prison is living in such a way you believe that anything is ever truly possessed or owned, and you are a prisoner of the fear of loss. And you will lose it because it was never yours to begin with and because that is the destiny of all things – transience.

Everything you hold dear now is under the constant threat of flux. Dying is unavoidable, you’ll lose people and relationships, as Depeche Mode put it “things get damaged, things get broken”, houses are homes only as long as you live in them, money has worth only until you encounter things that cannot be bought, status is fleeting, kids grow up and leave, beauty of youth deteriorates… and all off this brings about suffering. Buddhists accept suffering as one of the cornerstones of experiencing life and this suffering is made infinitely worse by our own attachments. There is no enlightenment without liberation and no liberation in fear, while fear is a consequence of attachment.

You are human, fragile as well as strong and resilient, and it seems an impossible thing for your human nature to get rid of all desires and expectations. These things are what build a large part of your character and all of them hold infinite potential for disappointment. The challenge here, in understanding the human state, is not to try and achieve the impossible complete elimination of desire and attachment and float to nirvana, but to understand and accept the mutability and impermanence of all things. To allow things to burn off, to die to some parts of you so that others could be born out of it. The challenge is to understand the true ontology of things (what they really are in their essence) without trying to keep them unchanged. So the way out as Buddhist see it: the highest self is not oriented on oneself or selfish desires, but to rearranging your energies so you become anchored in compassion, that your possessions and actions are aligned in such a way that serve the behalf of others and the community. You needn’t fear change, you are change itself incarnated.