Obsession…. it’s so easy to get obsessed with something. I mean, honestly, I have. I have obsessed over something philosophical or theological or political. I have obsessed over various dealings and types of relationships with various people for various reasons. I have obsessions over getting the “best” or the “right” thingamabob or the best ticket for the price and route. And it’s so strange how all of those obsessions fade into mist over time. One discovers that the point of view really didn’t matter, the dealings and relationships with the other person or persons worked themselves out in their own way, the stuff got to be just part of the background of life that comes and goes, and the journeys only a memory.
Of course, I know–and I’m sure you all do too–people who stay obsessed with *something* for years, or decades. Any dealings with them, or any conversation with them, about anything at all, quickly veers to their obsession. Others are friends or enemies–there are no neutrals–depending on whether or not one shares or at least commiserates about their obsession. Trying to have any sort of authentic person-to-person interaction with an “obsessive” is doomed to frustration unless one is fully in the shared degree of obsessiveness mode.
Yeah, those people are sad, and it’s easy to feel a sense of compassion and maybe moral superiority around them. As one mutual friend of an obsessive wrote me, “he’s insufferable.” Such an interesting word. One cannot bring oneself to have the suffering that being with this person entails.
But I did think that although one may not have that ONE THING that we obsess about over such a long time, moving from one external, unimportant, often mundane, others don’t care, obsession to another is not really much better at all.
Is the alternative a detached “go with the flow?” Such is the mood of what is called in the Vedas as “sattva-guna” or an inwardly happy sense of detachment and a feeling of rising above it all. A nice way to be, for sure. But at the same time, we living beings seem to want to deeply care about…..something or someone. Without such deep care and commitment and, well, attachment, it is hard to find meaning in life.
Suppose, just suppose, I could choose to take that same deep and abiding and never-extinguished obsession that these insufferable people have, and turn it to Krishna, to God? Oh, no! you might say. Sounds like an insufferable self-righteous fanatic who wants to convert everyone. Sorry to say, I have been that too. (blush). But suppose I could choose to be obsessive about knowing and loving God, without being insufferable? Suppose that obsession was in the heart and manifested in universal love and acceptance? Is that possible? Perhaps I can become obsessed with trying to find out.