Thanks for nothing: an ode to impermanence
In her book “Advice to Future Corpses,” Sally Tisdale writes, “Buddhist practice requires one to confront the blunt facts of life: that we are constantly changing, that we are dissatisfied more or less all the time, that we try desperately to hang on to what we have.” It’s a depressing little triad of assertions that somehow reassures me.
If I can’t stave off change, find lasting satisfaction or forever possess all the goodies (internal and external) I currently possess, then it’s comforting to know nobody can, that, according to Buddhist practice at least, I’m right where I’m supposed to be. But there’s more. Buddhist practice also says that coming to terms with all that we do not control is our central challenge, that the goal of being human is not to overcome dissatisfaction and impermanence but to undergo it. Quietly and appreciatively, if possible.
It is not possible. Every day I race around in search of loopholes.
Of course I can’t fight change, I think, practically rolling my inner eyes at the obviousness of it, as I read lines like Tisdale’s, above. But never do I think this on my way to workout class, where I am desperately trying to fight the suck of age with yoga and deadlifts and squats. Or on my way to the hairdresser, who will turn my hair back — way back — from its current shade of gray to a rich auburn.
And dissatisfaction? I know it’s the human condition. But I also know that were I to find the right pair of jeans that would hug my torso in just the right way, it would shoo dissatisfaction out of my life for good. For a while, I believed the same thing about growing my hair to a certain length, but now that it’s that certain length I see that I was mistaken and that it’s the jeans. It’s always been the jeans.
Apparently, the frenetic search for loopholes is universal. Before there can be a sense of freedom in the deep-down understanding that we’re not in control of things and that we’ll always be left wanting, we will devote huge amounts of time engaging in workarounds whose purpose is to push that deep-down understanding away. Rumor has it when we finally let go of trying to control outcomes, it will at first feel like grief but then feel like joy. I’ll get back to you on this.
Recently a friend told me she felt guilty about not having more pain in her life.
“You have no idea what’s coming,” I told her.
It wasn’t a threat. Obviously I have no idea what’s coming either; for all I know, she’s about to win the lottery and buy a continent. It was just a statement about our lack of control, about the fact that there’s no grand plan in place — at least not in my worldview — that protects some while throwing others under the proverbial bus. At any time our fortunes could shift. While it would be nice to believe that, based on nothing we’ve done to deserve it, we will forever be spared pain, it’s hardly likely. All we can do is know the risks and keep going.
“Impermanence is the key to our pain and our joy,” Tisdale writes, and I look over at my sleeping dogs, one sprawled across two chairs on the porch, one hanging halfway out of his bed. I miss my old dogs, but their passing made space for these. I miss the old farm, but I’m happy here in the belly of the cove. I miss my youth, but I like the freedom and the dramalessness of my 50s.
Change happens. There’s loss and dissatisfaction and discovery and joy everywhere, every day. There’s denial and acceptance in almost everything I do, a pushing away and a giving in, as constant as waves on a shore.
And there’s the search for those jeans. Those form-fitting, happiness-inducing, life-affirming jeans. They’re out there. I know they are. I suspect they’re like satisfaction itself, and that I’ll find them when I stop looking.