Pondering the reality of impermanence in our lives has been very present on my mind of late.
Without impermanence, all of life would be impossible.
Spring would never arrive, winter would never leave.
A girl would not become a woman and a boy would not become a man.
A seed could not grow into a fruit, for it would forever remain a seed.
As we age however, impermanence seems to bring a deeper road to embrace as the transient nature of life looms closer to us.
Accepting the inevitable process of change and the knowledge that all things will one day disappear holds the possibility of cherishing what we have in every moment.
What can jolt each of us into this awareness can be on many different levels.
What brought it forward for me seems inconsequential when I hear of others facing cancer diagnoses or losing a dear friend or loved one, but embracing the message is the key here, no matter what form it is delivered in.
My husband and I were driving home from a wonderful Christmas in Vancouver with our children.
We dreaded the drive home on the Coquihalla in knuckle-clenching weather conditions.
After two hours of slow crawling, we came into a somewhat clearer stretch and everyone increased their speed, including my husband.
I cautioned him to pull back from the car in front of us and leave plenty of distance between us.
With a bit of resistance to my back-seat driving, he complied with my request.
Five minutes later the car in front of us suddenly completely lost control and began five sweeping turns across the highway from one side of the road to the other as the driver tried to regain control.
After what seemed like a slow-motion eternity, he eventually smashed into the ditch at the side of road.
With the expanded separation between us, we were able to slow down soon enough to watch this sight unfold in front of us.
We were shockingly aware of the fact that we could have been entangled in this situation in a way that could have been disastrous for all of us.
After assisting the driver in the car in the ditch, we headed on our way, both quiet in our thoughts of what could have been and how quickly life could have changed in an instant.
This experience triggered a deep fear that stayed with me into January.
I did not know what was affecting me until I finally spent some time in stillness with it to discover what was going on for me emotionally.
Having to embrace the impermanence of life and the reality that we really have so little control over it was the gift that was held for me at the root of this somewhat innocuous experience.
What we do have control of however, is changing our relationship with impermanence itself.
We can change how we interact with things, we can change our relationship with the world and with all the things in it, with our possessions, our family, our friends, our thoughts and our emotions.
We can cherish and value things more. We can learn to appreciate what we have, while we have it, because we know it won’t last forever.
We can stop taking things and people for granted.
So, take in the beauty of the snow when the sun shines upon it, breathe in the love you have for your partner and express it, enjoy the bliss of that first cup of hot coffee in the morning.
You only have today to be grateful.
We never know when tomorrow may not come.
