Impermanence.
“This too shall pass.”
A phrase that’s used for comforting oneself in tough times, and to ward off complacency in good ones. But sometimes, I catch myself feeling these words as an indescribable emotion: the feeling of knowing that a day so far away will come. Perhaps how I knew the day I left school that one day, I’d leave college, and on other days (few and far in-between), I’d leave behind things that were once so important to me that they were all-encompassing.
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That emotion is so fascinating and empowering, rather than saddening, as one would expect. Because it so beautifully encapsulates the feeling of “memento mori”, I have only one life, these things that are mine are mine only for so long, and everything is bound to pass one day or the other.
It’s a reminder that loss leads love. And it’s so tragic that the word “loss” has this sorrowful connotation in the context of passing times. The things I once loved have to make way for the things I am fated to love eventually. And just because they don’t exist in the frame of my life the same way they did before does not, in any manner or form, adulterate the emotion I feel towards them.
Sure, the pages may yellow and curl around the corners, but the sight of them makes it all brand new, ready to be felt afresh. So, while this too may pass, I am grateful it came to be.
