31. My Nature Is Change

The world is constantly changing. What is formed dissolves. What is alive dies. What is built falls apart. Some things last longer than others, but nothing lasts forever.

Against this truth, I try to create something permanent, something I can rely on, something that will outlast change itself. Perhaps I do this because I can see that I am also constantly changing. My life is short — my body will decay and fall apart and my personal consciousness will eventually come to an end. I want to halt this process. I want to stabilize my existence. I want to preserve what I have.

These wants mean my striving for permanence is endless. It consumes all of my efforts and energies as I try to hold on to all that is slipping away. In response, the world tells me this is no way to live. It tells me through the immense suffering I produce for myself and others out of my attachment to things and people and places. I strive to preserve and protect what I have, but my efforts only generate strife and misery as one thing after another inevitably leaves me.

I don’t have to live this way. Instead of fighting change, I can allow myself to embrace it. I can move with the world and change with it. I can see the things I love as temporary, and in seeing this, feel gratitude for all that I am and all that I have. I can perceive myself and others not just as individual bodies but as part of something greater, a living universe.

The only fatal thing for a living being like me is to stand still. I exist to move and grow and change along with everything else that lives and dies. When I align my own dynamic being with the dynamism of the world, I release myself from the desire for permanence that produces so much suffering. It is then that I become free to discover the joy of my existence.