Blog #2
Welcome readers—if you have read my first blog post earlier this week, I’m glad that you’ve returned to read another; if you’ve just found it, I hope that you like what you read and that you plan to return to peruse future posts.
So—as I was doing research and writing about the subject of impermanence for a class that I lead at a senior center, I reconsidered the never-ending and dynamic role that impermanence plays throughout our entire lifetime. For sure, the longer we live, and the older we get, the more we are confronted with impermanence—and no matter how we fight it, resist it, or attempt to disassociate ourselves from it, impermanence will surely interfere with how we want things to be. As a result of impermanence, to a greater or lesser extent, we learn to reshape and redesign that which we didn’t choose to have changed, altered, added, or taken away.
When I question myself as to why our lives are set up this way, one response that I conjure up is that “all things change.” Personally, I have experienced a great deal of impermanence during my many decades of living. However, from knowing that permanence and the security that comes with permanence is not lasting, I’ve learned about the importance of being able to “go with the flow.” Also, I’ve realized that it’s helpful to create options, such as having a “Plan A” to call upon, and to accept that if Plan A is not workable, then there’s probably a “Plan B” that might be better. Impermanence has taught me to get past my disappointments and to be more accepting, in an effort to minimize my feelings of anxiety and frustration. The reality is that just about everything comes to an end, including us.
The opposite of impermanence is permanence, which manifests feelings within us of security, comfort, and ease. When we experience a sense of security and of enjoying a life that we deem as being good, there is little need to focus on the fact that permanence is precarious and that it lacks a “forever” guarantee. However, it is when that sense of security is removed that we may begin to realize that permanence is elusive, and that it is something that we have created in our mind. Doing this is positive, for without this internal emotional comfort, we would not have a grounded sense of well-being as we experience our everyday lives.
What I recommend is to consider that life, all of life, is finite. Once we have reached that thinking in our mind, then we become free, and impermanence evolves into a non-issue. The Buddah taught us that all of life and everything within it that constitutes who we are—our thoughts, our emotions, and our experiences—lacks permanence. He also taught that it is when we learn to remain unattached to whatever encompasses our lives, and when we are able to let go physically and emotionally (without pain and sadness), that we become free to broaden our thinking and to experiencing everything that constitutes our lives openly and with an expanded human inner vision. I have not yet reached that place in my life, but I’m enjoying the journey, and I hope that the journey before you will be enjoyed as well.
It is my wish that you can relate to what I have written for this post, and I definitely look forward to reading any comments that you may write. Thank you, and best to all.