The big great ongoing nonstop disappearing act of life

I remember the first time I encountered the idea of embracing impermanence. I was wandering around bookstore in Boston in the midst of a uniquely hard time in my life, and stumbled across a book full of quotes by Thich Nhat Hanh. I opened the book and there it was: 

“It’s not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”

My internal response was something along the lines of, “That sounds like some hippy dippy bullsh*t meant to delude people into happiness when the reality sucks.”

And then, six months later, my best friend died. 

Suddenly and mysteriously on the other side of the world, my very healthy, very vibrant 24 year old partner-in-crime was found dead in her cabin on the cruise ship where she performed as a singer.

And that’s when I finally got the whole impermanence thing. Because while there were many things that were painful about Jackie’s death, the most heart-wrenching of them all was the idea that it simply had never occurred to me that she could be there one day and then gone the next. I know it might sound silly - but it’s true. 

In my mind, she was supposed to be on this earth for decades.  But in reality, she wasn’t. I found myself asking, what else might not be here tomorrow?

Embracing impermanence can be a tough journey because it requires us to readjust our definition of security and control. It typically requires us to imagine losing the things we love the most - somehow being okay with the concept that the sun might come out tomorrow, but that’s really all we can depend on. 

As a result, impermanence can get a bad reputation for being all about embracing the loss of good. 

In reality, impermanence is not only about being okay with losing the good. It’s equally about being okay with releasing the bad. It’s about acknowledging that in every moment of every day we might be able to guess what will happen in the next moment, but in reality we do not know. We just don’t.

And while clinging to the people or the things that make us happy can bring us suffering when they are taken away - clinging on to suffering is just as much of a risk and can cause even more harm in the long run.

Over-identifying with suffering is what happens when we want to gain control and definitively draw a situation as black or white - good or bad. While labelling a situation as entirely bad may not inspire happiness in us, it definitely give us a sense of control, and so most of us will do so subconsciously at some point or another.

The issue? If we are in a situation that feels bad, ideally we want to eventually be in a situation that feels good. And by labelling a situation as 100% entirely undoubtedly bad, we end up ignoring or even attacking any available path towards a better tomorrow. 

While this may seem like a total topic switch, I’ll say this…

If you are feeling numb today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling energized today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling grateful today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling depressed today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling hopeful today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling hopeless today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling lucky today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling lost today, that’s okay.

If you are feeling a little bit good, a little bit bad, a little bit angry, a little bit confused, a little bit nothing today. that’s okay. 

If you are feeling one way while someone else, especially someone you care about, is feeling another way, that’s okay.

Your pain and your happiness are not forever and they are not mutually exclusive.

Your happiness does not automatically negate another person’s pain, and your pain does not mean you will never feel happiness.

You can be nothing and all of the things, and as long as you are a little open to it, tomorrow will be different. Every day is different. Every moment changes into the next. 

That’s the whole idea of impermanence. It’s not about deluding yourself into being happy when you’re not. It’s about knowing that the good, the bad, the in between, the upside down…it’s all always changing. 

Tomorrow will be a new day.