On Impermanence
or How to Stop Worrying and Love Humanity
I’m scared, and sad, and angry, and yet filled with gratitude and wonder all at the same time. We have this fleeting moment of consciousness, this one beautiful and fragile life that we are lucky enough to have won in the cosmic lottery with all of the uncountably many more potential people who will never be born. As Richard Dawkins says,
“In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
It feels greedy and ungracious to be anything but delighted to simply be. And yet… and yet, it’s scary to feel so small and insignificant, to know that we live in an uncaring universe where almost everything is beyond our control. As Jennifer Michael Hecht says,
“We live in a meaning-rupture because we are human and the universe is not.”
We are not exempt from the forces that brought mass extinctions to this planet in the past. Humanity very well could be ended by a stray asteroid or climate crisis or something else of our own making or not.
Just as we are aware of, and must come to terms with, our own mortality, we face the more difficult existential challenge of finding meaning in the context that everything is impermanent — our achievements, our societies, our species, our planet, our sun, our universe itself. For some of those the end is very definitely a long way off, whereas for others it’s less sure where in the timeline we fall.
It could be sooner; it could be later. But I wonder, how much does the timeline matter for how we feel when we recognize impermanence? A sense of futility and meaninglessness can be driven by the knowledge that someday this will all be for naught, even if that someday is quite far down the line.
There are those who think we’re facing the imminent demise of our species, and whether right or wrong about the timeline and scope of the challenges we face, they offer lessons for how we can cope with impermanence:
The formula is this: fall in love with the world, especially the natural world and the good nature (even if buried) of your fellow humans. Bathe in the rapture of a forest, fresh air, the ocean, wildflowers in the high meadow, the stark gorgeous geometry of dunes, the sounds and refreshment of a river, the food you just picked in your garden—these heirlooms that are enjoying their last hoorah, as we are (even without climate change!), for no moment is quite like the next. Take heart for every human being who, like you and me, is trying, is tortuously beautiful, is confused and scared, still innocent because none of us knows the big answers. Even the assholes, the villains in this story, and their cargos of pain, that would have destroyed you or me long ago. Feel their angst, their confusion. Forgive them.
The clock will timeout on us all someday, but we can find joy and gratitude in the fact that we get this moment under the sun to look around. Use that moment to love, to forgive, and to marvel.
