Finding Comfort in Impermanence

Impermanence is a concept in philosophy, so it's a concept in my life. Impermanence is the realization that everything is always in transition.

The first time I encountered this idea was during a vipassana retreat, about four years ago. I was in a place where I was questioning my purpose, and drawn to anything that I thought would "fix" me (so, not vastly different from who I am now). The thread connecting my ten days of rigorous meditation and noble silence practice was the concept of "anicca", impermanence in the Pali language. I observed anicca through breaths in the belly, rising and falling; through sensations in the body, accumulating and dissipating; and through emotions and ideas in the head, coming in at waves to my seawall of focused attention and then crashing off. I still remember the first time I experienced anicca in practice. It was on the third day. After never having sat for more than an hour in meditation, spending 14-16 hours on a cushion each day on the first two days were rough, and I moved and fidgeted...a lot. I was a child who couldn't be still, with my unruly tantrums. I wanted to be more conscious. So on the third day, ten minutes in, when I felt the same pain in the lower back that had peer pressured me into the moving and fidgeting the prior couple of days, I decided...not to do it. I decided to just notice the pain. Just to be aware of it. Just to be with it. As I paid attention to it, I felt it move from the lower back and to the left side of the neck. I stayed with it. I had nowhere to be but with this feeling in the body, this feeling in the head. And then, it too, went away. All of this happened without any physical action from my part.

It was a relief, realizing that no matter what I did, there would always be things outside of my control; that no matter what, everything is ever-changing. It was a relief because for this inner fixer, that meant that I could let go of the conditioned beliefs that contributed to ideas of self-sabotage, failure, and imposter syndrome.

The concept of impermanence doesn't just stop at its definition. Knowing that impermanence is the only permanent concept in this world isn't enough. You have to take that step further, and that action requires not craving or averting from what's present in the moment. It's about feeling into the sensation in the moment, without recoiling away from or lusting after it.

Once I learned this concept, I realized how tethered I've been to this my whole life. Everything I had done in my life up until that point was built around either creating the emotions of joy, happiness, contentment or pushing away the emotions of sadness, anger, depression. This showed up in the form of abruptly switching jobs, breaking off relationships (or staying in for longer than needed), traveling on a whim, or changing my whole life around. I was looking for a way out the mundane, because the mundane wasn't pleasurable, and I wanted pleasure. I did this through creating euphoric experiences, experiences that create wonder and awe in the moment, experiences that I can then recall later.

The problem with this was that the things I craved never permanently stayed. The joys I was ins search for were never mine to fully have. It's because none of these emotions ever last. In each of the jobs I abruptly left, I had lots of good first impressions, made awesome connections, and accomplished great things. I left when I wasn't getting those positive emotions anymore, and I thought it was the job that needed to change. But, impermanence is constant, and therefore, the same pattern of jubilation followed by emptiness would happen at each of my subsequent jobs.

Same thing happened in my relationships. I fall in love easily. I love the honeymoon phase. I love when things are happy, butterflies fly around in the stomach, and I don't think of anyone but her, constantly throughout the day. So, each time, inevitably, when the honeymoon phase would end, I would look for a way out, wanting to recreate the experiences of newfound love, over and over again. In the process, I missed on doing the hard work, the work that great, intimate relationships are forged with.

What's the common thread in this? The only constant in the examples of the jobs and relationships is me. I pushed career, people, and experiences away, because I was looking for something that wasn't available at the time, Instead of being present to what was transpiring inside, I was looking for an escape route. And although I thought I found one at each point, I would end up repeating the same pattern, without a fail, every time. If I had managed to look inwards, I would've seen what was happening within me, and I could've realized that the external circumstances are just external, and that they had no bearing on my inner being.

Yes, at the end of the day, it's an essential skill to be content. Everything we do, we do so we can achieve some sense of clarity, which in turn would provide us a space of calm. But, this doesn't require another being or thing, something outside of us, to create that for us. Contentment can be achieved from within only. It requires vigilance on your inner emotions, and it requires you to give up control and desire to recreate things that are not permanent.

So how do we do it? Being mindful *is* noticing the impermanence. The breath arises, and then falls away. Each breath comes and goes, without us being tethered to it. And because of that, when a breath leaves, we don't suffer. Because of that, when a breath arrives, we don't elate. Contrast that to our minute to minute interactions with ourselves and others. In a relationship, when things don't go our way, we feel discomfort. We crave what was once there. In being with oneself, we tend to avoid emotions of depression, sadness, anger...things that we consider unpleasant. On the other hand, we do as much as possible to feel good in our bodies, minds, and in others. We attempt to create constant harmony, something that is unattainable. Everything is in flow, and because of that, things will never stay the same.

The only truth, as Goenka would put it, is "anicca, anicca, anicca"