Attachment vs Familiarity

Attachment and Familiarity are the phases of any relationship. First you get familiar with someone and then the familiarity increases which leads to Attachment. Even for a baby, first it has to get familiar with the mother. Once it gets familiar with the mother's touch, her smell, her voice, it gets attached to her emotionally. Its how nature is.

Everyday while going to office, I take a short cut to avoid the main road. It saves me a lot of time as it lets me bypass the traffic. It was on this short cut that I first saw the old man. He was holding his crutches and standing in the balcony, looking at the vehicles passing by. He was wearing a loose pyjama and a kurta and had a newspaper in his hand. I did try to see which newspaper it was, but pardon me, I have a bit of Myopia which didn't allow me to. I wondered whether all the vehicles which passed by were causing him irritation or whether he was simply used to them. Once I got to office, I forgot all about the old man. The next day while going to office, I saw the old man again standing there in the balcony with his crutches. Since that day up until last week, I saw the old man everyday. But from a week, I had not been seeing him. The balcony remained empty. Everyday when I took the shortcut I instinctively looked up to the balcony to see if the old man would be there. I used to feel a twinge of sadness to see the lonely balcony. Yesterday while taking my usual road, I looked up the balcony out of practice. It gave me such pleasure to see the old man sitting there on the chair reading the newspaper! It brought a huge smile onto my face. I almost wanted to shout out to him and greet him in welcome.

It made me wonder whether this was Familiarity or Attachment. My emotions were attached to the presence or absence of a person whom I hadn't spoken to even once. The emotions lasted hardly for 10 minutes, but it still did bring a slight change in my mood. Strange how the mind works eh?