Impermanence is such a beautiful word. It’s pregnant with meaning and each of us will have our own way of explaining what it means to us.
Have you smelt the perfume of a person as they pass you on the road? One second you notice it. The next second it is gone.
Have you noticed the sky changing its colours as dawn breaks over the night sky? The colours are indescribable and beautiful. You cannot hold on to it even with the best of cameras. Your eyes are capable of noticing so many more colours than what is available through the best lenses available with us.
Have you felt the touch of love on your skin and tried to hold on to its memory? The memory of the physical touch is fleetingly impermanent while the emotions that were created last forever within you.
The smile of a stranger passing you on the street may last much longer in your memory than the dress that you were wearing while you experienced the moment of togetherness.
Have you stood on the seashore and watched the waves rushing towards you? There are big waves that turn out to be a damp squib when it touches your toes and small waves that suddenly gather force and slap hard when it reaches you. The waves form and disintegrate in rapid succession only to leave the memory of their presence.
Our life is lived in the quest for permanence. We toil hard to buy ourselves toys, trinkets and assets. We hoard our hard-earned wealth in secure holdings that we believe will be ours permanently. We believe our death is not near and that we have all the time to experience life when we have achieved this goal or that.
We exchange our impermanence for an elusive permanence. We exchange our precious breath to chase the money that will get us our assets. We exchange our time to invest in a career that we believe will always be with us while our loved ones wait for us to give them our attention and love.
Love is permanent and lives on beyond death, while the house or island or boat that we bought cannot be carried through the gates of death. We invest in an elusive permanence that cannot be carried with us while the impermanent moments spent with our loved ones are permanently imprinted into our hearts and passed on through many births.
Look into your life and check what are the memories that linger with you. Is it material things you owned or how you felt when in a brief second or moment you experienced a magical connection with someone?
Write down five of your most precious memories and relive why they were precious to you.
Then write down 5 things that you are working hard to achieve in the near future and examine what are you really expecting to gain from them.
Let us experience the myriad moments of life where the magic happens if we just paid a little attention to the moment. Bring your awareness to the here and now and notice the flutter of the butterfly wings, the blossoming of the wildflower that you pass by on your way to work, the fleeting smile in the stranger’s eyes or the brilliant hues of the setting sun.
These pass you by carrying the message that the Creator loves you and is blessing you if you are only willing to receive it.