The Life-Changing Freedom of Impermanence
It’s spring where I live.
Flowers are blooming, vegetables are growing, bees are busy collecting pollen.
It’s a season of new life.
But it won’t last.
Soon, it will be summer. Some of the plants will wilt in the heat.
Then it will be autumn.
The leaves on the trees will turn brown and fall to the ground.
In winter, the vegetable plants will succumb to the frosts.
This is the nature of impermanence.
It’s the natural order. Seasons come, seasons go.
Change is inevitable.
Seeing the impermanence in all things frees us from attachment.
When you feel anger or sadness, you can learn to identify the emotion and observe its impermanence.
You can feel it rise up and cloud your experience of the moment.
But soon, it will give way to a new emotion.
Change is inevitable.
When you break up with someone you love, you will naturally experience the pain of loss.
That’s normal.
But in time, it will pass.
You can choose to be grateful for the time you had with that person, for the season you shared together.
Because, after all, everything is impermanent.
When you lose a job, a client, or a contract, you can know that it was never permanent to begin with.
Let it go, as gently as possible. As sure as spring follows winter, another opportunity will arise.
Accepting the impermanence of life itself sets you free from the fear of death.
It leads you to live in the present moment because it’s all there is.
Time, by its very nature, is fleeting.
Can you see?
It is by clinging to permanence that we experience suffering.
It is by accepting impermanence that we experience freedom.
Everything is impermanent.
Nothing lasts forever.
This, too, shall pass.
