“I tell him: since you’re worthless, leave, go. Why are you bothering us? He says: no. I won’t go! My words make no sense to him. Just like that calligrapher who wrote three types of script: one only he could read... one both he and others could read... and one neither he nor others could read. That third script is mine when I speak. Neither I understand it, nor does anyone else.”
- Shams Tabrizi.

The elder compared the mind to a plain and various events to a flood.
The more bushes and trees (which symbolize attachment) there are in this plain, the more the flood's force is neutralized, leaving almost nothing behind.
But when you feel no attachment to anything, or these bushes and trees are minimal (or more accurately, when you’re depressed), even simple events become like devastating floods, erasing your presence.

This is how, when the stairwell janitor knocks and asks to place shoes inside the shoe rack, your lack of attachment to the stairwell residents overwhelms you and might bring you to tears.

Sometimes when I go for a walk, after 45 minutes I find myself standing at an intersection, unsure where to go, this is when the crisis hits.

It’s similar to AIDS. For those unaware, the HIV virus itself doesn’t directly damage tissues or show immediate effects. It attacks a specific type of white blood cell, gradually destroying them. Eventually, it’s the weakened immune system that turns normally harmless microbes into deadly diseases, leading to the body being unable to cope and, ultimately, death.