The “Memories” feed in Facebook brings back interesting moments that may otherwise fade. A couple days ago, a status from a few years back jerked me back into one of the most awful days of my life. Reading it, thinking back, and looking at the comments all left me with strong gratitude that things have changed, yet I could go back in my mind and in my feelings and remember how difficult it was to let go at the time and let change happen.
Other events in the last couple days bring the same to mind. All composite things are impermanent — and that means every experience we have in our lives and every aspect of our world, our bodies, and our minds will change. All of it. Things end even when they’re hard. Even when it hurts. However, what I’d like to share in looking back and at looking at other changes from afar is that there’s beauty in that as well. Even in something that seems sad or tragic, it can be a change that lets go of pain, hopelessness, or perceived meaninglessness.
To take a familiar metaphor from mythology — if fate is a thread that is weaved into a story, the end of a fated thing is the cutting of a thread, and that cut may hurt or be perceived as a violent stop — all endings are, in a way. However, it’s only in that end that the tapestry, the full story and beauty, can be completed, and sometimes that’s actually better than a thread that’s stretched so hard and thin that it’s fraying.
May this provide you perspective to accept the ups and downs of life’s vicissitudes.
Gassho!
On the Way 
Jan 19, 2019 @ 02:33:38
You have such a wonderful way of looking at things. I find your comment that: “Even in something that seems sad or tragic, it can be a change that lets go of pain, hopelessness, or perceived meaninglessness.” I agree with you on that; I don’t have to go far in my own life to see it. I quite like your mythology metaphor. Interesting. “All composite things are impermanent”. I would agree. I would even go so far as to say everything is composite. Why? I believe that nothing stands alone, that everything is dependent on something else for its existence. So I guess what I am also saying is that I believe everything is impermanent; that it is the one thing that is guaranteed. I am so aware that without the primordial dust I wouldn’t be here; nothing would. I remember once, long ago, I was riding on a bus. I had just been exposed to the idea of interdependence through something that I had read from the writings of the Dalai Lama. I wanted to prove it to myself. So what did I do? As I looked out of the window of that bus, I saw a house. I noticed a brick in the wall of that house. I thought; Okay, that brick couldn’t exist without the person who took the clay and turned it into a brick, or the food that fed that person so they might live, or the farmer who grew the wheat for the bread that person ate, or the ground and sun and rain that allowed that wheat to grow…and so on and so on. I did this exercise for all sorts of things that I observed out of that buses’ window: the football that a university student was kicking across a field, a telephone pole, the bridge the bus crossed over, etc.. I had never thought that way in my life before. It was an eye-opener for me. So yes, for me, everything is composite and everything is impermanent. Thank you so much for this post.
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Jan 22, 2019 @ 18:35:52
Thank you! I actually wanted to write a post about interdependence or “interbeing” (as Thich Nhat Hahn puts it) in a similar vein to how you describe your experience, but I thought it may not be interesting to others. You’ve convinced me that it would be quite an eye-opener for those who need it though, so I’ll write that soon. Thank you for the support and the inspiration!
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