A 2024 Song of Impermanence
Everything changes.
Is there any truer or trite truism?
At the end of another year, when we’re contemplating all we’ve done, what we’ve missed out on and all there is left to do, all roads lead to change.
It’s our constant variable.
Regardless of your mindset, your world view, or your steadfast unmovability, change will continue to come for you.
It looks like your child moving out into the world on her own, even against your better judgement-ed will.
It’s the early death of a former friend who gave up the joy and humor they lived with as a young person, for bitterness, regret and anger as an ancient middle-aged person.
Change is the text on a random weekday that crumbles the lifelong beliefs you knew to be true about who you are and where you come from.
Change is a train without a caboose. There’s no end in sight.
That’s why people who choose to live in revolt of the new, amaze me. What do they gain by their stance? I wonder if it’s as simple as fear? The fear of what’s coming, or what might be coming? My mom used to tell me that when I was a child, I would hide from her by covering my face. If I couldn’t see her, then she couldn’t see me. So many people cover their faces expecting that the new or different won’t find them.
It, of course, always does.
This was the first year that my husband and I celebrated the holidays with our daughter as a “guest” in our house, rather than a resident. For a moment, while we were laughing with her and her boyfriend about the characters in “Die Hard,” the Christmas movie, I was thunderstruck with the joy of the whole moment. I knew that I had chosen to live in the present, with this new paradigm of my daughter and her life, rather than wax nostalgic for times gone by. I could have caused myself suffering by wishing things were different than they are.
I didn’t. I embraced exactly what was in front of me.
Life is difficult enough. Why make it harder on ourselves by shaking our fists at things we have absolutely zero control over.
So this is my song for you. It’s a song of impermanence. We humans are here for the blink of an eye. The pyramids may still stand, but they’ll fall someday. As will the Statue of Liberty and the redwoods. It’s the way of it. It’s how it’s designed.
As one year ends and another begins, as it has since forever, embrace the next, the new and the end. Because no matter how gorgeous, terrible, painful, delightful, irritating, and joyful it is, it won’t last. It can’t, and that is the beauty of it all.
LB Adams is the CEO of Practical Dramatics, LLC, and communication strategies consultant. She is an award-winning speaker and author.