Why nothing stays the same

There is no such thing as forever. We’re constantly shape-shifting — getting fatter, getting thinner, getting wiser, getting fitter. Meanwhile trees and plants are growing, buildings are changing, people are coming in and out of our lives, and our moods are constantly fluctuating, like clouds scudding across the sky.

We have a strange relationship with our changing lives. Sometimes we believe in permanence, that things will stay the same. When we’re deep in a hole, in the middle of a crisis, we fear we will never climb out into the light. Conversely when life is going well, we catch ourselves wishing, “please don’t end.”

It’s a peculiar state of affairs — desiring the world to stop when we’re happy and hoping it will speed up when we’re not. Anyone who meditates knows it’s hard to stay in the moment. To be right here, where we are. Instead, we project ourselves somewhere into the future or somewhere back in the past. When we were children, we wished we were older. But now that we are older, we reminisce about when we were children.

I was on the Headspace meditation app recently, watching a video about glass. A permanent thing you’d think. So hard wearing and long lasting that archaeologists find Egyptian glass that’s 5,500 years old. But it’s made from sand — a thing so small and light it’s blown away by the wind.