impermanence is a sort of continual breaking of the heart.
like a branch lodged in the riverbed, life flows around us, pushing, pulling, drowning, descending, caressing, agitating.
should we stiffen against the flow, fight against these forces which seem determined to break us?
seeing that we cannot change the nature of the water, or life, should we become calloused, resisting the elusiveness of it all, resisting the heartbreak?
could the waters soften our exterior, could we rather bend in harmony with the flow? relax into the forces beyond our control? learn their rhythm and cadence and depths and subtleties. could that bending strengthen us against the kind of breaking which destroys?
and maybe the heartbreak of impermanence is not a breaking, but an opening. a deepening accompanied by the growing pains of a womb stretching to cultivate and sustain complexity.
maybe the opening of impermanence invites us to a softness of heart sensitive to the transient glimpses of beauty, watching as they come and then go, longing but no longer clinging.
you were here and now you’re gone
and the heights
and the depths
and their eternal interplay
are all beauty.