The concept of impermanence keeps creeping into my life.

It was the subject of a few recent passages in the Buddhist and Taoist collections that I read every morning. It was the first thing I saw in the library last week, as the theme of Mary Pipher’s new memoir. It was the salt in my daughter’s tears when summer camp ended, and it’s the ache in my heart when I look at her and wonder where the last decade went.

It can be kinda crazymaking to consider that change is the only constant; that we’re always in this weird transformative flux of evolving towards our expiration.

It’s hard to say goodbye to the status quo we took for granted, our youth, our health, and our loved ones. The upside is that impermanence impacts everything, including shitty situations – they too shall pass.

When I overthink all of this and existential dread kicks in, I remind myself that change is a biological imperative. Every cell in our body, every cloud in the sky, every stone on the earth, every wave in the sea, every single moment is fleeting – it’s up to us to find beauty, joy, meaning, and purpose not in spite of but because of our shared impermanence.