This Too Shall Pass: Making Peace with Impermanence

    In the mid 1800’s, just before what historians mark as the official start of the American Civil War, the United States of America was teetering on the brink of its own demise. Fierce debates about the morality of slavery were taking place in legislative houses throughout the country. There were instances of violence across the land as newly established states reckoned with the issue of slavery’s legality in their own jurisdictions. As America expanded its territory beyond its original thirteen colonies, the question of slavery loomed large in the picture and there seemed to be little consensus among citizens about whether the institution of slavery would have a place in the future of America. Strong opinions were on both sides, and before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, skirmishes were already breaking out in places like Missouri and Kansas where the question of whether these emergent territories would be free states or slave states was still unresolved. 

    Amidst all of this simmering conflict, a Republican lawyer and vocal opponent of slavery emerged from the political turmoil of his home state of Illinois. He was largely self-educated and managed to establish a formidable reputation for himself as both a lawyer and a politician. His name was Abraham Lincoln. 

    Lincoln rose to prominence in the Republican party ranks despite some noteworthy political setbacks. Perhaps the most famous defeat occurred in a Senate race with then incumbent Stephen Douglas. Their campaigns were heated and the seven political debates between the two are still, to this day, esteemed to be some of the most famous political debates in American history. Apparently the pair drew crowds numbering in the thousands. Lincoln eventually lost the election but through the debate process, he cemented his respect among his fellow republicans as a fighter and a powerful presence in the political landscape of the time. Despite the failed senate run, Lincoln had established himself among his party as the most viable candidate for the office of president in the Election of 1860. 

    In the months leading up to the election, Lincoln traveled the country giving rousing speeches wherever he could. He was known for his skills as an orator which likely stemmed from his days as a trial lawyer and his avid love of reading. In 1959, at the Wisconsin state fair in Milwaukee, he gave one such speech where he spoke as follows: 

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentiment to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride; how consoling in the depths of affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away." And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us, and the intellectual and moral worlds within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”

    He is referencing a tale that is hard to accurately trace but seems to have originated in Persia hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years ago. Early references going back as far as 1200 tell the story of a now-unknown Sultan asking one of his sages to give him a saying, a few brief words that he could inscribe on a ring that would be applicable in any life situation. The sage offered the now-famous aphorism: “And this, too, shall pass away.” 

     I remember my mom telling me that when my parents were just starting out in their marriage, she was in grad school and going through some particularly burdensome swell of academic workload. She came home one evening after a tough and draining day and my dad had posted a close approximation of the saying on their apartment door. My mom said the gesture moved her. When she read the words, it gave her a bit of much-needed energy to persevere. The anecdote stuck with me and it's where I first heard the saying as a child.     

    I also recall that a yoga student of mine had the words tattooed in Hebrew on the back of her neck: “Gam zeh ya’avor.” Clearly the words strike a chord with people. A powerful, no-nonsense bluntness is conveyed in the saying and we humans seem to have found a certain profound comfort in keeping this truth close to our hearts. I suppose there is a certain poetic irony that one of our most famous lines about impermanence has endured longer than the Persian empire from which it likely originated. In its simple embrace of the inevitability of change, its wisdom has proven to be timeless. 

    The historical context in which Lincoln’s speech was delivered, spoken at a period of deep national vulnerability, has an uncanny resemblance to our political climate today. Though nothing analogous to the nightmarish violence of the Civil War battlefield has occurred yet, there are certainly some noteworthy signs in our current political climate that suggest we Americans- many of us at least, would have no issue with inflicting physical violence on anyone representative of our decided political opposition. People have grown increasingly distrusting of others, especially when those others are gauged to be political adversaries. It is not uncommon to hear voices on either side of the political spectrum asserting with much conviction that if the opposition wins, it will surely mean the death of democracy. 

    I am not interested in delving into the many indicators that our democracy grows increasingly fragile as that would be a different topic altogether. Suffice to say, things are heated now in America’s political arena and it only seems to be intensifying. In our current volatile times, one might argue that Lincoln’s wish that the United States of America should continue its so-called “onward and upward course for as long as the earth endures” perhaps seems a bit naive. American democracy will be whatever it will be at this point, and there is no guarantee that we will regard any future form of governance to be an improvement. The important thing is to recognize the impermanence of it all, and THAT is often a hard pill to swallow.

    Lincoln reveals something deeply human in his brief nod to the wisdom of “And this, too, shall pass away.” Beyond acknowledging the succinct clarity of the words, he praises its emotional temperance and the way it pulls us out of our extremes of attachment and aversion. It softens our grip on the things we love, and it fortifies us to bear our afflictions. It centers us into an unassailable truth about everything material. Nothing lasts. For a country in pain, the sentiment is offered as a soothing balm- a folksy-yet-educated way of saying, “We’ll get through this, everyone.” 

    Obviously Lincoln recognizes that the pithy little saying could also apply to the very delicate fabric of the United States itself. In 1859, the air in America would have been crackling with the energy of a coming war. There was no guarantee that America would remain a nation, being as divided as it was at that time. “And this, too, shall pass away.” It’s certainly an edgy thing to say to people whose votes and support you seek. It may not exactly draw in people who want leadership. Lincoln, in a sly stroke of rhetorical damage control, wisely adds the words, “And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true.” 

    Not quite true. Lincoln speaks of a deeply human caveat on our sense of impermanence. We understand the basic reality of it, yes, but we also resist it. We know nothing lasts but we would prefer that such a cold law not actually apply to the things we love and value. Though we pay sincere lip-service to the reality of impermanence, when it comes to confronting the actual heartache of our own grave losses, we want an abstention from rule. Alas, it does not work that way. Our love for things does not confer permanence in them. 

    Certain civilizations have made valiant efforts to preserve aspects of their former greatness with varying degrees of effectiveness. Ancient Egyptians certainly gave it a solid go. The pyramids of Giza and their mummified contents have withstood the thousands of years of erosion and decay which swallowed almost every other remnant of early Egyptian life. But even these lasting objects are not what they once were. A mummy is still dead and the great pyramids are now crumbly versions of their former glorious selves. There is an entropy that even huge slabs of solid rock are not immune to. Even the best efforts at historical preservation cannot hold up against good old-fashioned mother nature. Rain falls, wind blows, and things erode. It’s a brute fact of life. Given enough geological time, even the loftiest mountains are made low. 

    I once saw, scratched in the flaking paint of a neglected car in someone's back alley, the frank and honest words: “Rust never sleeps.” There is perhaps another irony in recognizing that oxygen, the very essential element for the soft and squishy human life we value, is constantly pulling our most sturdy and hardened metals into their destined oblivion. Only gold, by virtue of its resistance to oxidation, seems to last. But we humans have found it largely unsuitable for building much more than coins, jewelry, and Sadam Hussein’s toilets.

Chemists will confirm that gold’s lasting purity is primarily due to its complete atomic structure which is uniquely immune to the inevitable electron exchange with other elements. Gold does not readily react with other elements which is to say, that it does not easily share its outer orbital electrons with other atomic entities. Oxygen by contrast, is very reactive. It has a very loose and giving atomic structure and is more than willing to donate its outer electrons to other elements. By its very giving nature, oxygen relentlessly takes. It acts like a slow, gaseous acid eating away at our sturdiest building materials as it gives our own living cells life. As long as there is oxygenated air for us creatures to breathe, iron, despite its incomparable strength and abundance, will ultimately have to take one for the team, so to speak. Some things will decay in the very presence of the same element that is essential for life in others.

Even the life-giving effects of oxygen are finite though. At some point, all the atmospheric oxygen in the world cannot save a life whose time has come; and all living things will have their time. Gold alone gets a very minor and technical pass, but everything else falls under the law. Even if you take a certain comfort in the idea that your gold necklace will far outlive your own body by thousands of years, there must be no mistake that you will not be around to see who wears it, sells it, buys it, steals it, or melts it down into a matching solid gold plunger and brush set. 

    In Buddhist traditions, one will encounter a fundamental concept called The Law of Impermanence. This law simply asserts that all things in material existence are impermanent. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end to all things and simply recognizing and embracing this immutable truth, according to Buddhist philosophy, is essential for true happiness and harmony with the flow of life. The Law of Impermanence as it has been articulated here is admittedly a Buddhist concept and inasmuch, one might be apt to construe it as a religious belief. It is most certainly not a belief though. It is a law that leaves little wiggle room for negotiation. Buddhism by no means has a monopoly on the observable reality that all things pass. It is plausible that neither the Persians nor Abraham Lincoln had much interest in the far-Eastern doctrines of Buddhism. They had their own religious ideas based in Zoroastrianism and Christianity respectively, but they spoke of this recognized truth in their own honest and authentic way. There is no attempt being made here to sell a religious belief, Buddhist or otherwise, only to articulate a matter of reality that you can see with your own eyes. All things come to pass- even things that seem to stick around for eons, like mountains, pyramids, Mitch McConnell, and Twinkies. 

    We will have to stick around a little longer than Abraham Lincoln did to witness the end of American Democracy, but we cannot say with any certainty that it won’t ever happen. Given enough time and under the right conditions, America could become a fundamentalist theocracy worshiping a giant Chicken-god called Xander-Flippety-Floo. Nothing is technically off the table as far as impermanence is concerned. In any number of considerably less extreme cases, yes, American Democracy could very readily go belly-up. In some sense, it has to eventually- at least as we currently know it. Our democracy will certainly have to change with the times. What works in one era is often discovered to be outdated and untenable in another. Empires fall. Revolutions happen. Human history is replete with change- some of it is dramatic and violent, some slow and quiet, but things are moving along nevertheless and change is inevitable. The manner in which American Democracy will eventually die and what will come after are certainly up in the air. But our current form of governance should not be, as Lincoln may have tried, “hoped” into permanence. 

    Mindfulness teacher Shinzen Young once asserted that if you could speed up time to observe the earth’s surface over billions of years collapsed into a few seconds, that it would look much like the surface of a lake, with waves of mountainous rock ascending and fading away like so many ripples of water. It is only in our limited temporal perspective that we sense things on our earthly terrain to be lasting. Take a longer view, and one discovers even the sturdiest seeming objects are slowly coming to pass. In this regard, one could say that the world is not really filled with objects- only events and occurrences. All the people, animals, plants, rocks, and solid things populating our world, even the earth itself, are events. Some last longer than others, but everything has a lifespan- even if it is billions of years. Though we still have an estimated 10 billion years left in the thermonuclear cauldron of our own sun, its existence too is understood to be finite. When the sun goes, our earth goes with it, as does all of our pointless human noise and gold accouterments- scattered into cosmic dust and sent out into the cold oblivion of space.

The non-existence of things is an essential companion to the existence of them, which is to say that the end of an event is an essential part of the event itself. There is no such thing as a snake with no tail or a river with no mouth. What comes after something is the empty space where that very same thing does not exist anymore. The truth of this is unwavering. 

    All the gnashing of teeth that people get caught up in about the end of democracy, the end of one’s culture, bloodline, or legacy, is just a frantic attempt to swim against the river of time and fight a reality that cannot be defeated. The most peaceful and content beings know this to be true. Your youth, your ideals and values, the tales of your heroic endeavors- no matter how lasting you want them to be, cannot be rendered permanent by any of your efforts. In the end, the void of non-existence eventually swallows everything. 

    This may sound all very depressing, but recognize that this depressing feeling too will pass. There is a certain joy in recognizing that, as Lincoln put it, in the depths of despair we can know that the feeling is not permanent. We can experience our own emotional states with a certain relaxed trust that they will eventually give way to something else. Even if certain emotions seem to linger, they eventually subside in their intensity. We don’t have to “get over” some loss to recognize that the loss is eventually metabolized into acceptance. The sting of disappointment becomes muted and we may find that even with the most massive instances of pain and despair, that eventually huge swaths of time pass by without our attention being co-opted by whatever bad things occurred in the past. Impermanence sometimes gets a bad rap because it implies the demise of things we love, but it also offers a kind of grace- that we don’t have to bear our heartache and hardships with the same vivid pain we once did. 

    Do not let the truth of impermanence lead you to a bland, flat nihilism whereby we hold the idea that nothing really matters because it’s all going to end anyways. There is a value in taking care of what we have even if we know that it will not last. Our bodies, our liberties, our values, even our earth, are all worthy of care and maintenance simply for the fact that we enjoy them as they are now. Just because your car will eventually break down does not mean you shouldn’t get your oil changed. Just because you are going to die, doesn’t mean you should just relentlessly abuse your body with toxins. Just because the house you live in may not survive the eruption of a super-volcano or a nuclear war, doesn't mean you shouldn’t occasionally sweep your floor. Treat the material of your world with kindness. The people and social organizations that bind us are part of that material and we obviously want the best for ourselves- both individually and collectively. Our responsibility to do right by ourselves and the world around us is not negated by the fact that sometime in the next 10 billion years our entire planet will be completely and utterly obliterated. You are here now and this is where your experience of life is happening. 

    Take care of what you value. Tend to it all lovingly. Impermanence doesn’t imply that we should just give up and neglect what is, simply because it won’t exist someday later. The event of existence is happening now and you are completely involved in it. You are responsible for doing everything you can to make this moment what you want it to be. Simply do your best to serve what is happening. Enjoy and care for it all- your freedoms, your youth, your body, your car, your house, and your possessions, but hold them loosely with your care and concern. Recognize that these things likely won’t be around forever and in that, you might actually appreciate them more. When we know something is finite, we do not take it for granted that we will be able to experience it in the future. The dark, unknown emptiness of non-existence waiting to claim all things that pass should be seen as a blessing. It is precisely in the cessation of events that we learn to appreciate them more. How pleasurable would pleasure be if it never ended? If it was all you knew- how would you even recognize pleasure if it was simply some ongoing experience without end? If even the most beautiful song were constantly playing, you would likely grow sick of it at some point. Though we might crave immortality, it is very conceivable that life would not hold the same preciousness for us as it does now when we are aware that we will one day pass away. As an immortal, we might even find that we begin to envy the restfulness of death as we watch other people slipping away into its quiet slumber. For many in this world, death has often been the most gracious release from unbearable pain. Imagine being denied that release if you needed it. The ending of things is sometimes a godsend. 

    Whatever the future brings, it will be different than what it is right now. Things will come, and things will go- feelings, money, our health, our youth, people we love. Mostly we will notice things going. And this, too, shall pass away. We carry this pithy aphorism that may be as old as the Bible to remind us of what we can see with our own eyes but try so hard to deny. We know it won’t last, yet we hope it does. How chastening in the hour of our pride? How consoling in the depths of our afflictions? Let us hope it’s not quite true. 

    Much of our anxiety arises from this internal tension. So much that an anonymous Persian ruler wanted a ring that he might be wedded to the succinct truth inscribed on it. We encounter an important strength when we can face the inevitability of loss. We are free from our anxiety about the future and can live in the paradise of the present even if and when this paradise overtly sucks. We are free to be ourselves, and do our best, without any attachment to the outcome- because we know it's all vapor someday. By opening fully to the reality of all things passing, not just tossing out the now-cliched line in a cocktail conversation or a political speech, we encounter the ultimate vulnerability. In that, there is a freedom that no money can buy. We can stop fighting what we know can’t be fought anyway. A calmness emerges from this level of honesty with ourselves. There is certainly some pain in that honesty, yes, but there is also much to rejoice about- you are free to stop chasing what you like, and resisting what you don’t. The inviolable transience of all events reminds us to simply enjoy what we enjoy as it is happening, and to endure what we must until it ends- which it all inevitably will. Time rolls forward inexorably and all things that come must also go. All events, even the ones we cherish the most, will conclude. Rust never sleeps. 

    The future brings with it the beginning, the middle, and the eventual annihilation of all things that occur- good and bad. Let it all pass as it does and treat each fleeting moment of this gift that is your own life as something glorious and sacred. When, at last, the winds of time scatter our earthly dust across the eternity of space you won’t be around to do anything about it anyway. You are here now. This is the reality you must dance with. Simply live here in the ongoing procession of your own experience and everything passing through it. It’s all passing through. You can rest your faith in this truth completely. Every material event has a beginning and an end- the pain, the pleasure, and the ongoing sense of your own observant self watching it all happen with as much ache and joy as your beating heart can handle. Regardless of what tomorrow brings with it, it is only on the threshold of the present moment that we truly exist. The event of your being in this world is happening right now, and it is only here and now that we can genuinely experience any of this wild pageantry we might simply call being alive. Let all things pass and you will find that you are entirely in the flow of things- peaceful, wise, humble, and free. Democracies and empires may fall, youth will fade, and you will eventually be separated from everything you love and cherish. However you might choose to wear a reminder of this impermanence- a ring, a tattoo, a note taped to your doorway, keep it close to your own heart in good times and bad alike. In the honest reflection on the firm truthfulness that all things eventually fade, we establish a poignant and grounded relationship with our ever-changing world. We can be with it all as it is, authentically grateful that we have been born into our own conscious bodies- that we simply have the amazing capacity to feel and perceive any of this constant parade of things both loved and loathed. It is all nothing short of miraculous. And this, too, shall pass away.