CREATIVITY | MENTAL HEALTH

Master the Art of Involvement without Attachment to Stay Sane as a Content Creator

As a content creator, your job is interacting with people. Here’s how to be involved without getting caught up in their drama.

I hate fame. Let me rephrase: I’m scared of fame.

I love fame. Don’t we all? I love the perks it comes with. The perks it seems to come with. Lunch with your country’s president, for example. Oh, the power that must bestow upon a humble human.

After he became big(ger), after he started hosting the daily show, when Trevor Noah visited his home country, the sitting president at the time invited him to parliament.

Just like that.

What I’d do with such power! Would I influence policy? Would I get him(my president) to step down, simply by asking? If I just said, pretty please, would he stop diverting a large percentage of our budget towards buying new cars for his ministers? “Kind sir,” I’d say to him. “We’re in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of buying cars for your ministers, Please buy more hospital beds.”

I digress. But you get the idea: Fame comes with a certain level of power.

And with great power comes great responsibility. This! The responsibility, this part is what scares me. Suddenly who you are, becomes open to the public. Because they know your name, people become entitled to you. Because they think about you, people believe they can take their frustrations out on you.

Content creators are no Trevor Noah. They aren’t that famous but it’s basically the same gig: An intimate level of involvement with people you don’t know. People who don’t know you. People who may end up making your life a living hell just because they can.

Abused Intimacy Breeds Chaos

As a content creator, your job is people. Your job is involvement. Intimacy with strangers.

No, I am doing this for me. You may say. I am writing for myself. My art is for my satisfaction.

True! But quick question: why is your private, for-your-eyes-only art all over the internet? Also, why do you get frustrated when no one sees your art?

Let’s face it. We want people to read our words. To see our art, to be involved with us(our content). We want to be seen. Even if it’s an unconscious desire. The problem is people on the internet, the people who read our sentences, most of them don’t know how to see.

Most of them don’t know how to absorb art, to read your words without making them about themselves. They get triggered. They fight and contest and end up missing the point you’re trying to make.

But that’s okay.

Why? You may ask. Why is it okay for people to fight and contest my art?

Because of three simple words, my dear: Involvement without attachment.

But How to Be Involved without Getting Attached. That Is the Question

“When you have no fear of attachment and entanglement, you can involve yourself absolutely with anybody.” — Sadhguru

I learned this lesson the hard way. Coincidentally, by retweeting Sadhguru’s Tweet.

I was proud of myself. I had done well. My tweet would make someone — even if just one person — feel better. That was until someone commented in disagreement.

There’s a feeling you get when someone contests your opinion on a topic you’re an expert in. I’m not sure what to call it. The best I can describe it is, entitled defensiveness. As in: “I know what I am talking about. How dare you disagree with me!”

Mental health is one such topic for me. I don’t have a psychology degree. No, my experience is of the lived-through-it type. I know the pain depression leaves behind. I want to make it better for others. To console. To hold someone’s hand in any way I can. That’s what I was trying to do with this retweet of Sadhguru’s tweet: My message was a beautiful reassurance of the advice: “You’re not crazy, it’s not all in your head.”

“Sometimes it’s all in your head!” A comment materialized immediately.

I’ve heavily paraphrased. That’s not what the comment read. She didn’t comment with those exact words. But she might as well have. Because that’s when it happened: The entitled defensiveness. I needed to educate her. To make her understand that, in fact, what I was talking about had nothing to do with the comment she had left on my tweet.

I gave myself time to compose the most educative answer, during which time I realized something.

I realized I’d been attached to what my tweet was supposed to accomplish. I wanted people to applaud. To agree. To nod and feel better. To recover from years of suppressed torment in an instant. But my tweet accomplished much more than that. It showed me my friend’s pain.

I realized her comment wasn’t in denial of my message. It was an indirect communication of her experience. I shifted the conversation towards discussing her story. I investigated. I asked her what she had meant by the comment. We ended up talking about her struggles with insomnia. It was a more beautiful(meaningful) conversation.

Allow People Their Reactions to Your Work

You have to become fluid. To become somewhat detached from your work. How people interpret your work is out of your control. That’s the beauty of art.

Create it with the best of intentions. Put your heart, your soul, everything you are into it. Be as involved with your creation as possible. But after that, after you release it into the world. Let it go. Become detached. Allow people to bring their experiences to it. Allow people to become transformed. Allow your content to start uncomfortable conversations. To bring you closer to your friends.

The online content creator gig can be very stressful. We are control freaks, and we don’t even know it. We want people to comment in a certain way. We want our work to be received how we intended it to be.

Unfortunately, most time our work does more than that. Most times it turns acquaintances into friends, it opens people’s hearts, and starts the most unlikely conversations.

But we have to let it all happen. We have to put our intentions aside and allow our content to blossom in people’s hearts. Otherwise, we end up starting unnecessary strife: strife which makes our lives unbearable.

Master the subtle art of Involvement without attachment to stay sane as a content creator. Put everything into your work but after that allow people to have their own experience of it.

Thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this story, please check out this one on what to write about if you’re tired of writing about self-improvement: