Intrinsic Impermanence

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Everything in your life will end. Unfortunately, this seems to me like a lesson that’s only learned the hard way. I’ve experienced harsh realities that have drilled this into my head relatively earlier than in most people’s lives. But everyone learns this eventually. Your childhood -- with its innocence and naivete -- will end. Many of your friendships and relationships will end, even the ones that you once thought would last forever. By “end” here, I mean these people may exit your life and continue their own lives elsewhere. There are, however, morbid endings as well. The people who raised you will eventually pass away. And, in due time, the lives of your peers -- friends, partners, siblings -- will also end. Everything ends. As much as we romanticize the idea of “forever”, in nature, there is no such concept.

One of the preliminary cognitive concepts we learn as children is that of object permanence. If you play peek-a-boo with an infant, they are genuinely thrilled to see your face reappear as you open your hands. This is not just them being silly; prior to a certain point in brain development, we cannot comprehend that an object’s presence persists even when it cannot be seen. As far as the infant is concerned, you are truly vanishing from existence and reappearing every time you close and open your hands in front of your face. It’s magical. Within a few months, children learn to understand object permanence, which provides a huge relief from their separation anxiety. They can rest easy knowing their caregiver is always around, even if not in their direct line of sight. But perhaps we take this lesson too far, and begin to expect that people (and anything in general) will just stick around.

I’ve fallen for the illusion of permanence more than I’d like to admit, and I'm sure many others have as well. Every time, a similar pattern emerges: something in my life gives me a deep sense of meaning, I cherish it while it lasts, and then suddenly, without warning, it ceases to exist. The first two stages are standard, but the final stage tends to be devastating; in the past, I’ve desperately fought back in an attempt to restore that part of my life. But this is a futile effort. Impermanence is intrinsically built into every part of the human experience. Ironically, as we grow older (in most cases, as adults), we must re-learn the concept of object permanence. Of course, all aspects of our lives continue to exist in the present moment, even if we cannot actively see them. But each of these will end at some point, whether we look after them or not.

Accepting impermanence as a fact of nature opens up a path to conceptualizing loss and grief on healthier terms. It’s tempting to think of a relationship, for example, as a waste of time if it results in a breakup. But that, to me, is a consequence of our egotistical belief that such things must last forever because we hoped that they would. Any relationship would inevitably end some other way if not through a breakup. That time was not wasted; it was spent experiencing a beautiful process of life through its natural completion. The same goes for friendships. At some point, any friendship will inevitably end due to one of two reasons: the friends will grow apart from each other, or one of them will pass away. Both instances are tragic. Both instances are also intrinsic to nature. In neither case should we assume that such an experience is not worth it because of the loss at the end. Everything in our lives is fleeting. No part of it will last forever. The meaning we find in our life, then, must come from experiencing the world as it is, in the present moment. And once the present moment concludes, we shall let it pass.