Impermanence: You Can't Stop The Waves

Yesterday was a rough day. Life was giving me a hard go of it, and the day-to-day grind was starting to get the best of me. For every ounce of progress I made, it seemed a pound of problems were being added to my burdens.

Luckily, I found something I wrote a long time ago, scribbled on a tattered piece of paper in my desk drawer:

“Don’t live life like you’re trying to build sand castles too close to the shoreline. As you erect a turret, a wave comes along to obliterate your front gate. For every crenellation you chisel out, another wave begins to flood the moat you carefully constructed. No matter how fast you build, the waves gobble up your flimsy fortress. You retreat, and the tide brings the waves to you eventually. The waves keep coming, despite your best efforts.

Why are you still surprised by the waves? Why are you fooling yourself by trying to build a garrison that can never keep them at bay?

Forget imaginary castles.

Go play in the waves.”

This was a poem I had written once upon a time. Like a message from my past self, it was an idea that I sorely needed to be reminded of: impermanence.

Nothing lasts forever. Change is omnipresent in the universe. Nothing in the world can endure the natural forces that apply to all things. One day, the pyramids will crumble into the sand. The Great Wall of China will be little more than a pile of pebbles. Similarly, our social world is always in flux, with relationships beginning and ending unexpectedly. Life and death occur simultaneous and without friction, chugging along like two unlikely friends on a tandum bicycle. Everything changes eventually. Impermanence, paradoxically, is one of the few constants that we can count on. 

Yet, humans have the audacity to rage against reality. Humans seem to believe that we should be given a free pass against the universal law of impermanence. Our world should be stable. It should be unchanging. It should stand still so that we don’t have to worry about the unknown.

But trying to stop the relentless force of impermanence is like trying to stop the waves of the ocean. It’s a fool’s errand. 

Better to accept reality.

Better to expect the waves.

There is no fortress you can build, physical or psychological, that won’t crumble before the might of impermanence.