AES100 Impermanence

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

-Homer, The Iliad-

I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing lasts forever. Even the stars will die out someday, even the greatest loves can fade with time. Impermanence is an immutable fact of life.  Most people think that in a negative way, but I myself find it comforting.  The promise of change means that our troubles are not forever, it also means we can appreciate the good times more. The moments we experience in our lives are unique to ourselves alone. 

It is the fact that we don’t live forever that gives meaning and importance to the time we do have. We find beauty in the impermanence because we know we will never be here again. It is said that the Gods envy us, because we managed to make the flaw of our mortality into our greatest strength. We feel everything more intensely, we laugh louder, fight harder, and we love fearlessly. 

When we see fruit flies, we think “oh those poor flies, living for just one day and then dying, what sort of an existence is that?” But on a grander cosmic scale, we’re exactly like those fruit flies. Our human lifespan is nothing compared to how long the universe has existed. So yes, from a cosmic perspective we do only live for one day, but it doesn’t mean we can’t make it a really good day. So let’s wake up, be grateful that we’re alive, spend time with friends and family, say “I love you” to your partner, contribute to society and help those in need, learn more about the universe so at the end of the day, we can go to bed happy and content. Knowing that we did not waste our one day.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. 

Within decades we must close our eyes again.

Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?

This is how I answer when I am asked why I bother to get up in the mornings.

-Richard Dawkins-