Dealing with Change

 

One of the truths that I’ve learned is that everything — every person, every situation, every object, every being — is impermanent.

 

We are not permanent beings. Even the self that we think we are is constantly changing — there’s some continuity, perhaps, but not the same self. Everyone is like this.

 

Even objects that seem to stay the same are not. They’re decomposing, getting older, fossilizing, getting weathered, getting fragile.

 

This impermanence is scary, and it’s also liberating.

 

When we can see this impermanent nature in everything around us, in ourselves, in our lives … we can see that we’ve been grasping at nothing. It’s like reaching up with your hands to grab the wind. And this grasping, this trying to hold onto something that’s never the same, never staying still … this is why we’re suffering. It’s why we fear things, why we procrastinate and go to distraction, why we get stressed and angry and frustrated.

 

This constant change, this impermanence and the loss that goes with it (we’re constantly losing our lives, losing ourselves as we know it) … this is scary. We want things to stay the same, and yet they never do. This is why we suffer.

 

So how can we deal with this fear of constant change and impermanence and loss? We can start by accepting it. It is the reality of life. We cannot change the impermanence of life or ourselves. We can fight against it and suffer, or we can accept it.

 

And we can see the freedom in this impermanence. If we are never staying the same, then yes, we are losing this safe idea of ourselves

that stays the same … but we’re also given an opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Each moment! This changing self can be reinvented to whatever we want. It’s not completely tied to what it was a minute ago.

 

An example: a minute ago, I was someone who was procrastinating on writing this book. I could think, “Oh, what a horrible writer, what a procrastinator I am!” And feel horrible. Or I could let go of that image of myself, and instead reinvent myself as someone who is actually writing. I do that by starting to write.

 

So if you’ve been bad at habits, let go of that past self, because it’s gone. Start a new self. And then a new one.

 

If your loved one has gotten angry at you, that feels bad. But that loved one’s anger is caused by his or her suffering, and that suffering can be changed, can be eased. Your suffering as someone who has been wronged can also be changed. Instead, you can become a compassionate, empathetic person who gives comfort to this suffering loved one. You can let go of the wronged version of you, and become the calm, compassionate version of you. Your relationship can be healed, because it is constantly being reinvented.

 

This is not to say the past doesn’t matter. It obviously affects the present and future. But we’re not completely bound to the past — if everything is changing, that includes the harms and suffering of the past.

 

This might seem like heady stuff, and it is. We’ll get into more concrete stuff soon, but it’s good to see what we’re up against as we deal with letting go. The skill of letting go helps us to deal with reality as it is, instead of how we’d like it to be, and be more skillful within that ever-changing reality.