John Adams on Reframing

John Adams, writing very early in the Revolutionary War, well before the Declaration of Independence:

"That we are divorced is to me, very clear. The only question is, concerning the proper Time for making an explicit Declaration in Words. Some people must have time to look around them, before, behind, on the right hand, and on the left, then to think, and after all this to resolve. Others see, at one intuitive glance into the past and the future, and judge with precision at once."

Reframing is instantaneous. But we can be sluggish in our consideration, and in our trigger-pulling. We tend to overcommit to the present frame, even when it's untenable. It's the same phenomenon as a "frozen perspective".

This is also what Buddhists mean by "attachment" (upādāna). It's about attachment to a given framing, not greedy attachment to possessions. This attachment is deeper and more foundational, leaving us feeling stuck and unable to shift perspective. Hence suffering.

Adams recognized that people get stuck, but couldn't quite place the "how" and "why". And even the Buddha struggled to express this subtle notion in understandable language. "Attachment" has been eternally misconstrued. Consider all the Buddhists through the centuries who stripped off their clothes and wandered naked into the forest, ferociously (and ironically) stuck in a framing of Seeking. Stiffening their backbones with resolve to transcend precisely the sort of attachment they were stoking.