The Art of Detachment: Befriending My Quarter-Life Crisis

by: Ash Beige Baby

I just had an encounter with… something. Or someone. I am still not sure.

But it shook me awake. It snapped me out of a fragile version of myself I once believed was permanent.

This is the first time I share this in public (if it can even be called a secret). So I was in the middle of what people politely call a quarter-life crisis, that quiet season where we feel misplaced in every room, trash, belongs to nowhere, attached to no one. I felt like I had to fake my personality just to exist, and even build temporary shelters out of strangers with small talk, pretending they were homes.

Ashame me.

Then I was exposed to an idea. A simple one. The kind we think we understand until it reaches our life and refuses to stay theoretical. It sounded easy, almost gentle. But when it dragged me into reality, it became something else entirely.. a wicked, beautiful bittersweet.

Anyway, I wrote this while sitting by the lakeside with a glass of strong matcha latte in my hands, that encounter's impact afterward. Funny how feelings arrive like that, unannounced, uninvited, yet 'perfectly' timed.

This writing will be long.

And heavy.

The illusion of control

Most of our suffering is not caused by events. It is caused by the belief that events should obey us. We run the world, they think. We try to control people, outcomes, timing, perception, narratives, blah blah. We want conversations to end a certain way. A Relationships to unfold a certain way. A Careers to rise in a certain way.

But, when life refuses to grant those wishes, we might experience injustice.

I was told about Ancient Stoic philosophers who understood this deeply. They divided life into two categories, what is within our control, and what is not.

Our effort is ours.

Our intention is ours.

Our response is ours.

And everythng else is just weather.

Trying to control what isn’t ours is like trying to command the tide. The ocean does not hate us. It simply does not belong to us. Detachment for me begins the moment I recognize this boundary, not as defeat or losing something, but as wisdom.

Effort without ownership

One of the hardest truths we accept is this: we can do everything right and still not receive the result we wanted.

Modern culture sells a myth of guaranteed outcomes where work hard = succeed. love deeply = be loved back. be kind = be rewarded.

But reality is way more complex.

Effort influences life, indeed. But it doesn't command it. Detachment is about giving my best without chaining my identity to the result.

When I released ownership of the outcome, my life becomes purer and I stop negotiating with reality then begin participating in it instead. The less I cling, the more consent and present I become.

We are not our emotions

Emotions feel permanent when we are inside them. For example, grief whispers 'this is forever', Fear insists 'you are weak', and Regret dragged "this defines you."

But emotions are weather, and they are experiences. Not identity.  I once read Buddhist psychology that teaches a radical perspective 'you are not the storm, you are the sky that contains it.' Temporary emotions lose their power to create permanent damage.

So, detachment is not suppressing emotion. It is refusing to let emotion hijack your life story.

Leaving without hatred

We oftenly believe anger gives closure. I once believed leaving in anger would protect me from regret, too. That bitterness was dignity, and resentment was strength. But anger is a demon. It binds us to the very thing we are trying to escape from.

Now I realised that the most powerful exits are the quite, peaceful ones. Letting go without revenge is not weakness, it is mastery. I don't even need to destroy something to leave it. And I don't need to hate someone to release them.

For me, peaceful detachment is kind of emotional adulthood. Now I refuse to carry what no longer belongs to my future wellbeing.

When energies don’t match

Some people and some spaces simply do not match our energy. That happened to me, and there is no villain in that truth (my bestfriend Ms.S told me that). There is only incompatibility.

We can stand next to someone and feel smaller, enter a room and feel drained, give and give and feel nothing return. That is not cruelty. That is information. A big yellow warning label.

Forcing ourself to fit in such an energetic mismatch is a slow mental destruction.  I even feel my positive energy waste for nothing, yet disguised as 'politeness'. 

Detachment gives me a cool permission. I am allowed to walk away from what consistently diminishes me. Not in anger nor  superiority, but with self-respect.

We are not required to shrink to fit environments that never intended to hold us.

The transformation of loss

Every ending asks a haunting question:

"why did this happen to me?"

It is a human question, tho, a wounded one. One that searches for fairness in a world that never promised it.

But let's just go to the other sides.

"What is this shaping me into?"

"What is this trying to teach me?"

"What is the lesson?"

Every loss removes an illusion, and every ending exposes a truth. Fracture reveals a strength we didn’t know we had.

I once told my sister something like that when she suffered a severe injury back in 2018. Her arm and ankle broke. Her radius and ulna fractured badly. I told her

“Your body will remember how to rise. Every broken bone grows back stronger, as if even pain is training us to survive better next time.”

I actually understand that pain becomes suffering only when I resist its lesson since long time ago, but in practical, it's so hard to apply.

So now i learnt that detachment doesn't deny grief. It instead allows grief to complete its work. And when grief completes its work, it leaves clarity.

Legowo, they say.

Accepting people as they are

A friend (Mr.B) once told me that my expectations were too heavy. I wondered if they were.

Then I realized expectation is the silent architect of disappointment. We fall in love with potential. We bargain with reality. We try to renovate human beings, but, people are not projects.

Acceptance is not surrender nor approval. it is recognition, the decision to choose reality over comfort, truth over the stories we beg to keep alive, the endless night negotiation with fantasy. I can love someone with my whole chest and still admit our paths were never meant to merge, such an irony I know, only to cross, teach, and continue.

Detachment is where the love purified  ownership, therefore I refuse to cage what was never mine to hold. So I can stay connected without abandoning myself.

Some things and people are not meant to stay. They are meant to wake me up, expand me, and leave me larger than when they found me.

What detachment gives us

When I release what I cannot control, I don’t lose anything real. I, instead, lose tension, illusion, exhausting need to force life into a shape it refuses. And then gain something even more, subtle but powerful sources; clarity, energy, presence, peace.

I'm choosing effort over obsession, peace over resentment, and growth over labels.

It is the return to myself after an endless night argument with reality.

The quiet courage of letting go

If detachment feels heavy, it means we are growing. And we know that growth is rarely comfortable, because it's time for identity to stretch beyond it old limits. 

Letting go is not abandoning care, instead, we care wisely.

My life is not a battlefield for me to conquer. My life is a beautiful landscape filled with amazing checkpoints to walk through with awareness, strategy, happiness, and self-respect.