Selective Detachment

Ok, One personally don't understand what does "detachment (from the ego)" really means, so one can't really explain to you, fellow readers about that. But one do learn that, some people misunderstood "detachment" with "don't care"; though there's some subtle differences, and it really isn't the same. Though, "don't care" is indeed one element of a lot more elements in detachment, from one's understanding. But what one wants to talk about isn't detachment itself and its definition, but "selective detachment". That is, if you (mis-)understand detachment as "don't care", when should you not care? Or more accurately, when should you detach?

One situation is when you can't think clearly anymore. A.K.A emotionally hijacked. When you are overwhelmed with emotions, the emotions that are evoked probably are a doing of your ego, perhaps a hypersensitive survival mechanism. To get away from your ego's doing, you know the drill, detach from your ego. That is, "I don't care what I feel right now, that doesn't matter, but I know there's something important I want to solve, and I can't let my emotions overwhelm me at this moment as it disturbs me from solving the problem." Sometimes, the emotional overwhelms may not be extremely strong, such that you it tweaks how you think but you don't notice that your thinking got tweaked. In that case, you also need to detach, so it doesn't do anything bad to your thinking, hence sabotaging the problem solving phase. So, when you get emotionally hijack, detach. (See note 2)

Second, when you got controlled by your ego. Ok, the situation above is a subset of this second point. What one means is, say, you're a person that "live to eat", not "eat to live". Therefore, your ego is controlling you to eat and taste more of the food, rather than you eating the food because you energy is low (see note 1). By detaching from your ego, you take control of your life and tell your ego, "no". Another example is exercise for couch potatoes. As you know, exercise first start as a "sour" experience before they gradually becomes enjoyable. And to overcome the "sourness", it's important to detach from your ego. So, when your ego comes to control you, detach.

Third, when your ego blocks you from doing something that you have a high chance of feeling regret if you don't do it. And this is a subset of the point above, if you'd noticed. Say for example, you want to go to meet someone in real life, but because of your timidness and the anxiousness that's overwhelming you (if you feel the same as me when meeting someone in a long time), you decide not to. Or perhaps you want to make friend with that someone but you feel you may be too aggressive approaching him/her, but when you really approach it's nothing more than a surprise to the other person. Or perhaps you want to go swimming but you just can't find the correct full-body shirt because you're shy that people will see your chest and belly (for non-restrictive countries where you don't get caught if you don't wear shirt only pants, please check law before doing this). All in all, your ego blocks you from doing something that other people enjoy doing and you keep convincing yourself that you can't do it. That's the time to detach from your ego. By "I feel that way yes, I acknowledge it, but I don't care, I'll just do it anyways." it's the only way to not feel regret afterwards.

In conclusion, although one do know that ego comes in most of the time and control us, and we let our ego do the work most of the times, unless we're monks that tries to detach our ego as long as we're surviving, there are times that ego becomes the road blocker, and it's something within your control that you can change. Remember, you can't change someone else, but you can change yourself, and your ego is something you can dealt with. Therefore, if it becomes a road blocker, it's time to at least temporarily put it down, forget about the "faces" and "pride" that have does no shit other than increasing the burden of regrets you got, and go ahead to do it anyways. Success or failure isn't the key, the key is you had done it, and the result isn't important.

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Note 1: Why "energy low" rather than "hungry"? "Hunger" is a misperception that your body needs energy. For example, people probably don't need to eat after dinner, to allow your digestive system to slow down and rest -- that's why we have people fasting all around the world. But if you're used to eating at night, not eating will induced the feeling of "hunger" even though you're actually not hungry. How do you know you're not hungry? If you gradually reduce how much you eat at night until you don't need to eat at night anymore, you'll notice the feeling goes away, a prove that you are not on "energy low" but just the misperception "hunger".

Note 2: According to this video, there's some long term bad effects if you separate your emotions from logic. But of course, there are also long term bad effects if you don't separate your emotions from logic. Say, your friend send you a text message (that don't have any body language) and he/she may be neutral but you percept it as negative, disregarding other possibilities. In that case, if you don't separate your emotions from logic, you have a much much higher chance of losing your friends, cause you'll end up sabotaging the relationship rather than thinking how to solve the problem or trying to clarify with the other person what he/she actually meant. You believe what you think is correct (emotionally hijacked). What do we do? The choice is yours to pick.