“All conditioned things are impermanent. When one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.” — Buddha
Simple as the Buddha may have made it sound, getting right with impermanence isn’t so easy. Accepting the true, transient nature of life means accepting loss at its grandest scale. Acknowledging that the most basal of our pursuits—comfort, happiness, love, life itself—have no final destination is a serious dose of reality.
It’s easy to interpret this nihilistically, particularly in the face adversity or grief. But impermanence doesn’t mean that these aren’t worthwhile pursuits. Life has meaning if you choose to give it meaning, whatever that meaning might be. And I believe that this is what the Buddha meant when he talked about impermanence—when you accept that the journey is what matters and begin truly living in the present, the bumps along the road are less painful because you’re not focused on them.
This is something that I’ve personally struggled with. I’ve experienced—and caused—a profound amount of pain and loss over the years, and viewing that solely through the lens of change has been nearly impossible. At some subconscious level, a big part of my decision to pick up and leave my old life is probably a feeble attempt to own that pain.
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