Impermanence

I am joining with Tess, Lucy, Kel, Barbara and Christine, who have all chosen, or had chosen for them, a word for the coming year.  Something to immerse yourself in and learn from, to explore the intricacies of.

When I read these posts this morning I did not have a word for myself.  But now, it comes to me late this afternoon: impermanence.

So much of our suffering comes from a certain sort of rigidity.  Expectations.  A belief, perhaps even subconscious, that things should or do somehow always stay the same.  That leopards do not change their spots.  That we are always going to be the same.

I do not generally hold to that view.  And yet ... and yet ... deep within, there are cords that pull me this way and that, into this thought and that feeling, that it should be like this because this serves me.  I have defined and confined and categorised and labelled this, and when it changes, it unsettles me.

I have had some amazing experiences over the past several years of seeing people I know, intimately and acquaintedly, change in ways I would not have quite believed in a part of me even while the other higher part of me has believed in the process or applauded the outcome.  So much of my own suffering over the past decade of difficulty - depression, grief, anger, fear - has come from things being other than I expected.

I have been looking at myself, too, meditating upon certain thoughts and beliefs I hold that, once held and examined from different spaces, simply fall into dust.  The Western conception is often quite rigid, it seems to me.  Things are as we see them now, personalities are fixed, that person will always be nice and that person will always be irritating.

But yet, quantum mechanics tells us that the table we are looking at is more empty space than it is table particles.

This can possibly seem to be a rather cold way of looking at things, or at least a rather uncomfortable one.  Our egoes desire security, for the things in front of us and inside us to be concrete, unchanging.  We have defined ourselves and we do not wish to redefine ourselves or others.  We box ourselves in without realising it.  We believe we see the world as it really is, but how much do our thoughts and ideas about a person or a situation change from one day to the next?

Everything is in flux.  And once you cotton onto that idea, life is an exciting, wonderful, amazing thing.

So, that's my word for the year, impermanence.  As counterintuitive as it may seem, there is certainly a place of serenity to sit in an ever-in-flux world.  I look forward to examining the nature and strange beauty of impermanence through the coming year.

I loved reading about others words for the year.  Tess's is hospitality.  Lucy's is water.  Kel's is sanctuary.  Barbara's is joy.  Christine's is sovereignty.