Impermanence Is Life’s Only Promise To Us
Just at daybreak, I start walking west, which conveniently is left, down this little road conforming to the shore on the southern end of Sebago Lake, Maine’s second-largest, where we have been with out of state family for a few days. The morning mists ghost off the water and long weird shadows stretch behind squat fallen acorns because the sun is so low. There is a high white scar of a contrail through the cloud rubble. Dark silhouettes of trees and buildings slowly come into focus and chairs still circle cold fire pits around which people sat the night before.
Hard to reconcile the bucolic peace of this morning with the mask I now carry in my pocket and what it represents. I got to thinking about paradoxes. They are seemingly absurd or self contradictory statements or propositions that, when investigated or explained, may prove to be well-founded or true.
The Stockdale Paradox is one such. It has two parts.
(1)You must retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and (2)You must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. The idea was championed by James Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking naval officer held as a POW in North Vietnam. He also later ran as Vice-Presidential candidate with Ross Perot in 1992.
Even with all the angst and misery for so many of these last seven months, we are a far cry from the horrors of a prison camp and torture. Yet I couldn’t help thinking that what enabled Stockdale to live through his ordeal is useful today.
It’s just an ongoing conversation of the human race, it appears, finding that right balance between a sort of syrupy “everything’s cool” optimism and a too-fatalistic pessimism. Where’s the line to walk? You can’t be naive and you have to protect yourself (boxers’ corner men and referees say it repeatedly–”protect yourself at all times”), but you also can’t just live in fear and give up. There’s an element of trust necessary and a willingness to keep your heart open. Finding the balance may be the work of a lifetime.
Jung noted that “The serious problems in life, however, are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so, it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves us from stultification and petrifaction. The meaning lies in our working on it, not in its solution.”
It was Eisenhower’s great notion that plans are worthless, but planning is everything. I interpret the idea that being in a posture of planning, having a mindset, is what’s critical and useful. The plan itself may have to be scrapped. It is the engagement in the process which is so critical, not the end result. It’s like a working document, perhaps, focusing one’s intentions and thoughts.
In “The Dakini Speaks,” Jennifer Welwood writes–
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple — how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
None of us is in a POW camp, but we are stuck in our own heads. There are ways out. No promises are being broken by life.
