Wherein I take a walk at the lake and ponder my grandmother's wisdom along with the fleeting nature of life and existence.
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My grandmother died two months after my 30th birthday. She was 90, and as wise as her years. She had a saying that she lived by, and would repeat in times of turmoil.
This, too, shall pass.
I think about this phrase often. It’s universal and elegant. Zen poetry.
All things pass. The elation of a new romance turns to the day to day minutiae of a relationship. The searing pain of a breakup turns into a lesson learned, and maybe some growth. Financial calamities, lost jobs, friendships, hardships, loved ones, and yes… even you. Will pass.
Nothing is permanent.
It’s an innate human need to build things. We think it gives a permanence to ourselves, that our hands build things that live beyond us. But left alone, nature would reclaim our grand designs in a matter of generations, lifetimes that are a mere blink of an eye, an imperceptible blip in a universal persistence of vision.
And nature will reclaim all that we build, because we as a species will pass. Even mountains pass, whole continents will divide and collide, creating other continents and oceans that are themselves only temporal anomalies to be melted away at the violent death of the sun before it, too, passes.
Every action taken by you and everyone that has ever lived and everyone who will ever live will not have mattered. And we might as well have never existed.
Bleak. This is why people avoid big picture thinking. In fact, we spend an incredible amount of time and energy trying to not think about this. Because when you ponder that truth of existence, there’s only one place to go from there...
What’s the point?
But What’s the point is exactly the question we need to be asking.
What’s the point in yelling at someone who cut you off in traffic?
What’s the point in stressing over a slightly missed deadline?
What’s the point in holding grudges, in fearing new things, in working yourself sick, in trying to please other people? In the end, none of it will matter. None of your self-imposed suffering will have accomplished anything but to make your one blink of existence miserable.
And if you believe that there is an infinite existence beyond this one, then what’s the point of this one? Just a test? And if so, how do you pass?
By succumbing to your fear, spreading anger, and repressing yourself?
Or by channelling love, finding happiness, and spreading joy, and directing your energy into being the most absolute version of you possible.
By treating every moment as if it is the only one that ever existed. And smiling back at it, no matter what that moment has presented you, and saying, defiantly...
This, too, shall pass.
This Too Shall Pass | An Answers With Joe Short | |
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| Entertainment | Upload TimePublished on 24 Aug 2015 |
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