From Cold Disconnection to Warm Connection

Have you met emotionally cold people? I have. In fact, I was one.

Why was I emotionally cold? Because I thought I was supposed to be. I didn’t label it that way, of course. My labels for it were “detached”, “equanimous”, and even “mindful”.

This attitude didn’t stop me from being helpful to others, but it did make me superficial in how I relate to them. It disconnected me from others.

Eventually, I realized that it was a defence mechanism. Being emotionally cold, being disconnected was a way to protect myself from being hurt. By being emotionally disconnected from others, I didn’t form close relationships. In my belief then, being so saved me from having to face problems in relationships.

Did it work? Nope. In fact, being emotionally cold is a problem in itself, and creates problems with others. When I was being cold, I became insensitive to the feelings of others, I became careless in how I related to others.

So, is there another way?

Going by the Suttas, the Buddha never seemed cold to me. In fact, he seemed like a warm person. He was obviously close to Venerable Ānanda, yet detached.

How is that possible?

I’ve learned that to be warm and connected with others, yet detached, we have to be self-aware; so that we can understand what happens in us as we relate with others.

When we feel hurt, what actually is the cause? If we believe it’s due to others’ actions, surely we become wary of them, and that prevents us from being close to them. But if we pay attention to what happens in us, we might see that we feel hurt because of our unmet expectations towards them.

By saying that, I don’t mean we should try to avoid having any expectations. This won’t work, because it creates another expectation: expecting not to expect. By saying that, I mean just that: We feel hurt because of our unmet expectations towards them. The real cause is not that person, but our expectation towards that person. In other words, it is the clinging to an idea of how that person should behave.

What we need to do is to become conscious of this truth whenever we feel hurt—again and again—so that we may know this truth deeply and directly for ourselves.

As we do so, our wisdom grows, and the tendency to expect wanes. As the tendency to expect wanes, the intensity of feeling hurt wanes too when others behave differently from what we expect. We gradually become detached and feel freer to be connected with others.


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