Everything comes in phases. Everything is temporary. Everything ends.
We’re not always aware of this.
Consider childhood: Children are so immersed in life that everything lasts forever. Each tooth is loose for ages before it falls out. Summers are endless, in a beautiful way. Pain feels endless in the moment, too, until it passes. You’re never going to be a grown-up (for better or worse). You bask in your teacher’s glow (or suffer under her glare) for eternity.
So it seems like being aware that things end should be liberating when it comes to bad things. Doesn’t my friend find her difficult job situation manageable now that she knows she’s leaving soon? Didn’t A and I find long-distance much easier to handle when we had travel plans to see each other?
And it also seems like this awareness should be painful when it comes to good things. Moving away from good friends. Finishing a delicious meal. Life, in general.
But maybe it’s not so straightforward.
“This too shall pass” is agnostic: it applies to the good, the bad, the value-free. But awareness that “this too shall pass” can, sometimes, be a gift, even in good situations.
I don’t always remember that everything comes in phases, but when I do, this is what happens:
Detachment. I can step out of the moment and remember that this is just a moment in time. Whatever is happening around me or to me or by me is happening, and I can observe it, decide what it means to me, decide whether and how to react.
Appreciation+Focus. When I recognize that I’m in a good moment, I savor it. This, I think. Pay attention to this. Remember this. There’s some combination of focusing and zooming out to appreciate, letting the beauty wash over me.
Patience. When I’m in a bad moment, remembering evanescence makes it a lot easier to wait it out. To be okay not trying to fix everything, to accept that some things won’t work the way I want them to, but hey, they’re temporary.
Engagement. Knowing that this moment is just a moment makes it so I sometimes choose to engage, to be in the moment. This is not the same as appreciation: gratitude and appreciation require a certain amount of detachment, a meta-awareness of the the moment. If you’re truly engaged, you can be enjoying yourself and know that you’re happy, but you aren’t actively appreciating the moment in that moment.
I wonder if it’s the case that good moments are only truly good because they’re moments.
And then I wonder if all this talk is just confirmation bias—we are stuck in this world of phases and moments and evanescence, we need to believe we’re getting something out of it, so we try to make it a good thing.
Well, then. Good luck to us.
This Glass Has Water 