IMPERMANENCE

Impermanence is the state or fact of lasting for only a limited period of time. Anything that exists in time is impermanent. Anything that exists in form is impermanent. Unfortunately, most people deny the inescapability of impermanence.

Nothing lasts. Your work, your life, your possessions, your culture, your professional identity, your body, nothing. It's been said over and over:

• Jesus: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and?rust?destroy."?
• Dōgen: "Be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world."
• Nhat Hanh: "It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not."
• "Nothing endures but change."
• Masashi Kishimoto "All things that have form eventually decay."
• Carlene Hatcher Polite: "Impermanence is the law of the universe."
• Paulo Coelho: "Anyone who has lost something that thought was theirs forever comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them."
• Buddha: "Whatever has the nature of arising has the nature of ceasing."

I wonder if those who wrote the best-selling business book "Built to Last" took a look today. What if anything is the same as in 1994 when the book was published?

What is the same as 28 years ago? How many businesses, buildings, companies, professions, trends, tastes, and worldviews have changed or disappeared since 1994? The only permanent thing is impermanence.?

Sears and Robuck, Compaq Computers, Kodak, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Blockbuster, Tower Records, Pan Am, and Netscape – are but the shortlist of those entities that have disappeared. ATT is not in the landline, princess phone business anymore. Ultimately, impermanence is just a futile branding exercise. In every case, permanence is an illusion.

Covid has accelerated the speed of change. Tribalism, nationalism, and individualism have given change greater impetus to change. The change rate is constantly enhanced by advancing technological and scientific breakthroughs, now augmented by AI. And Climate Change puts the icing on the cake.

Now mix in current threatening geopolitical global events that could cause significant tremors that instantly change everything. Nuclear war is now a viable prospect. What are you paying for gas? Everything feels more tenuous. Nothing is for sure. Impermanence is much more tangible and intimate than ever before.

It is immutable; everything changes; nothing lasts. Everything, our emotions, thoughts, and feelings, from the cells in our bodies to the plants around us, is continuously changing and decaying.

So why are we so obsessed with permanence when nothing in the world is permanent? Not jobs, not relationships, not friendships, not our nationality, not our status, not life itself.

Why do we want things to stay as they are? Why? Because there is an unexamined and entrenched belief that permanence will bring security.

Impermanence is the only guarantee in life.?Growing old, losing a loved one, getting fired, getting divorced, meeting with an accident, or suffering an unexpected financial loss can happen when you least expect it.?

There is no "Built to Last." Impermanence is an irrevocable, immutable, unalterable law of the universe.

The question is: how best to relate to impermanence since it is an inherent part of life? Our particular view and our work are to develop yourself as an elder.

If you are on the outer edge of mid-life or any of late-life stages, you are now sensitive to the truth that you and the world, a world you spent decades building, are facing impermanence.

In becoming an elder, you cultivate a consciousness and accept a relationship with impermanence which positively uplifts everyday life and directly alters the relationship with aging, death, and dying.

Elders & Impermanence

COVID-19 brought home the fickleness of our plans and the impermanence of our lives. Events postponed, travels canceled, economy tanking, and jobs lost only portended a long period of more significant uncertainty than ever before.

Elders have a remarkable ability to extinguish anxiety, anger, and sadness, the predictable reactions to impermanence and change. Instead, elders can consciously and emotionally adjust to life's changes. Moreover, they adjust in ways that contribute to their physical and mental well-being.

Elders develop an ability to recognize they are experiencing the invariant signs and symptoms of impermanence. A recognition that leads to their emancipation from the reactions of fear, despair, and resignation.

Elders develop a consciousness that recognizes the beginnings of their suffering from grasping and clinging to thoughts, emotions, and things that are 'oh-yea,' impermanent. Elders can let it be.

Elders realize that their bodies, minds, and ego are impermanent at the most fundamental levels. Death moves from out there to residence in their consciousness – whispering in their ear – impacting how they live their lives. Elders live as though they are dying because they know they are.

The benefit-cost ratio is evident when you accept impermanence as the final verdict. The freedom resting in impermanence is much less grasping, clinging, wanting, jealousy, ego-driven, anxiety-producing, and struggling. Instead, elders gain a greater sense of liberty and peacefulness when they know they are indeed impermanent.

The Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us: "Impermanence does not necessarily lead to suffering. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not."