Impermenance

Good Morning,

This is the week of my 42 birthday and I can not help but to reflect on the many phases of my life and my thinking. In this reflection I can see that at no two points in time have I ever been the same person. I felt one way when I was young and saw the world through the eyes of a child, I felt another way when i was a teenager, and yet I see the world a bit more differently in my adulthood. So what does this mean? Am i schizophrenic? Unstable? No I simply have realized that nothing is permanent, not even ourselves.

At this very moment the weather is changing, our hair is growing, people are dying and being born, the world is in a beautiful type of dance where things come together for a brief moment then collapse away. It's how it should be. No matter how clear this may be to the intellect, we tend to put ourselves in a trance, thinking things are permanent, that we will always be or feel this way. This simply can not be.

What would permanence mean? It would be awkward, it would be an unchanging situation, isolated in space and time. There would be no beginning and no end, no causes and conditions. We would never be born, grow up, or fall in love. We would never eat because we would never be hungry. We could never be involved or have a relationship because that would change us (not impermanence).

Through this understanding we can begin to lighten up, we see the impossibility of life to be anything other than what it is, we liberate ourselves from the inevitable and begin to experience the sobriety and joy that is our life.

So as I approach another birthday it simply affirms I am human and in- sync with life and that is reason enough to celebrate!

Have a wonderful day and embrace the moments you have not planned on, life is giving you a small gift!

Peace and Love, Jim