Some things stick to you.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly making my way through Stephen Bachelor’s Alone, Together.

It’s brilliant, and also excessively academic- a blend of Buddhism and Existentialism that won’t be making its way to book clubs across America anytime soon.

But, it deserves some cliff notes.

Bachelor writes about authenticity: a way of being that acknowledges the core of our relationship to others.

We are fundamentally alone in our experience, says Bachelor.

And yet, we are inextricably bound in this world with others.

Alone, together.

Both, and.

Authenticity is challenging. Most of our experience is caught up in three inauthentic ways of beings: desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference.

These three states describe an perverted view of the world, like a crooked mirror.

Let’s start with desirous attachment.

It’s simple, and I know you’ve been there.

I want you.

I want you so bad.

Another person is seen as a means to obtain something you want. Maybe it’s attention or companionship, a fancy boat or a raise at work, or even spiritual fufillment or sexual gratification.

Every part of that person becomes desirable. From their fingertips to their hairline to the way they sip a cup of coffee.

They are breathtakingly, incredibly, essentially desirable.

Until something shifts.

“It is distinctly unsettling” writes Bachelor, “how this seemingly essential quality can so swiftly evaporate and disappear”. (203)

Then there’s aversion. Like desirous attachment, aversion features a person that looms in larger than the rest. This time, however, he or she is seen as essentially undesirable- an impediment to your happiness and success.

Violence and aversion are passionate lovers, but aversion has milder forms as well.

Aversion is my best friend yelling, “Everyone hates me! Everyone is so mad at me!”.

Inaccurate. Only one person was angry: her boyfriend at the time.

Then there’s indifference.

The most noxious, and the most subtle. Indifference takes on the view that other people are essentially irrelevant. As Stephen Bachelor says:

“…other people exist on the exterior with sometimes the merest flicker of interiority, whereas I am thoroughly present as a unique interior being and my exterior is just an inadequate reflection of what I really am”. (194)

Indifference is when you arrive at a party, and within three minutes, have decided that there’s no one worth talking to.

Desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference hurt.

They isolate, fracture and prevent us from connecting from our core.

In general, our attitudes towards others are usually neither purely authentic nor inauthentic. They’re an inextricable blend of both, with sometimes a winner breaking through to the surface.

When you find yourself in the grip of desirous attachment, aversion, or indifference, Bachelor advises that we allow ourselves to feel the emotion fully. Completely. Then take a step back, and observe it for the wild ride it is.

This practice leads to a more authentic way of seeing others:

Equanimity.

Equanimity sees others as essentially equal. No one is essentially desirable, no one is essentially repugnant, and no one is essentially insignificant. All of us are living, feeling, breathing beings, vulnerable to death and taxes, and full of hopes and fears.

Everyone is a whole universe, sharing the world with you.

Equanimity, however, is not the point, says Stephen Bachelor.

Fine. So what’s the point then?

Meaningful relationships, says Bachelor.