When I first retired, I found myself holding onto things with a strange intensity. The final day of work, the last group of students I hugged goodbye, even the rhythm of my morning commute—it all felt heavier because I knew it wouldn’t come again. Have you ever noticed how endings do that?
The Japanese have a word for it: mono no aware—the gentle sorrow of impermanence, and the recognition that beauty is heightened precisely because things don’t last forever. I wish someone had told me that when I was younger. I might have spent less time rushing through moments and more time breathing them in.
Why loss can feel like a teacher
We don’t like to talk about sadness, but it has a way of teaching us what joy alone cannot. As psychologist Lisa Firestone reminds us, “Sadness is a live emotion that can serve to remind us of what matters to us, what gives our life meaning”.
I think back to my own children growing up. When my youngest left for college, I remember sitting in his empty room and feeling the walls echo back at me. I was grieving—not just the loss of his presence in the house, but the loss of that whole chapter of motherhood. Yet that ache reminded me how deeply I loved him and how precious those years had been.
A culture that avoids endings
Our society doesn’t train us to appreciate impermanence. If anything, it teaches us to fight against it—anti-aging creams, constant upgrades, promises that “forever” is the goal. But forever isn’t real. The more we resist that truth, the more we miss the beauty right in front of us.
I sometimes wonder if that’s why we take so many photos these days—desperate attempts to trap moments before they slip through our fingers. But here’s the paradox: the more tightly we cling, the less free we feel.
Lessons from retirement
Retirement itself has been my greatest teacher in impermanence. After forty years of teaching, my identity was wrapped tightly around my role. Who was I without a classroom, a desk piled with essays, or students stopping by after school?
The answer didn’t come quickly. For months, I felt unmoored. But slowly, in the quiet of long walks and in the laughter of my grandchildren, I discovered something new: impermanence makes space. When one role ends, another begins—volunteer, mentor, grandmother, friend.
Letting go of my teacher identity wasn’t a loss so much as a transformation.
Finding freedom in sadness
The writer Carl Jung once said that happiness would lose its meaning without a measure of darkness. I believe that’s true. Sadness and endings carve out room for appreciation. Without the awareness that moments vanish, how could we fully savor them?
I often tell my book club friends that sadness is not a problem to be solved but a companion on the journey. It invites us to slow down, to notice, to remember.
Sometimes I even write letters to moments I know won’t return—like summer evenings when my boys were small, playing catch until the fireflies came out. I’ll never live those evenings again, but acknowledging them keeps the sweetness alive inside me.
Wisdom from a shamanic lens
Recently, I picked up Rudá Iandê’s new book, Laughing in the Face of Chaos. He’s the founder of the very site where you’re reading this, and I’ve mentioned his insights before. One line struck me deeply:
“When we let go of the need to be perfect, we free ourselves to live fully—embracing the mess, complexity, and richness of a life that’s delightfully real.”
That truth helped me understand impermanence in a new way. We try so hard to hold things together, to keep life polished and permanent. But life’s richness often lies in its mess—the fleeting, imperfect, unrepeatable moments that disappear as quickly as they arrive.
The book inspired me to treat impermanence not as something to fear but as a kind of liberation. If nothing lasts, then we don’t have to strive so hard to make things flawless. We can simply live.
Everyday invitations to notice
Impermanence doesn’t just show up in the big life transitions. It whispers in the everyday. The way the light changes across the kitchen table at dusk. The season of your children wanting bedtime stories before they suddenly stop asking. The small miracle of a blooming flower you know will wilt in days.
When I walk around my neighborhood, I notice the old oak trees that seem eternal, yet each one is shedding leaves, changing shape, inching toward decay. Oddly, that knowledge makes them more beautiful to me, not less.
Even cooking reminds me of impermanence. The soup I make on a chilly afternoon is gone by dinnertime, but the warmth it brings lingers. Meals vanish, yet the memory of them, the laughter at the table, leaves a trace that lasts far longer.
Creating space for what matters
Here’s the gift in impermanence: it makes us prioritize. If we had endless time, would we ever stop to ask what truly matters? I doubt it.
Because we know things slip away—our health, our children’s childhood, even our own days—we are nudged to choose more carefully. To make that phone call, to linger over tea with a friend, to speak kindness instead of holding back.
One practice I’ve taken up is a nightly reflection. Before bed, I ask myself: What was fleeting but beautiful today? Sometimes it’s something small, like my grandson’s giggle on the phone. Naming it helps me carry it more consciously, even as I accept it’s already gone.
Impermanence, in its own quiet way, teaches urgency without panic.
A shift in perspective
When I was younger, I thought permanence was the goal: a steady marriage, a lifelong career, a home that never changed. And while some of those things remain true, what makes them meaningful is their fragility. My husband and I don’t know how many more years we’ll share, so each morning together feels like a gift.
The ancient wisdom of mono no aware invites us to see beauty in this fragility. It doesn’t ask us to deny sadness—it asks us to embrace it as part of the experience.
Closing thought
Impermanence is not the enemy. It’s the very thing that gives life its color, its depth, its urgency. We grieve because we love. We let go because we have held something precious.
So the next time you find yourself wishing a moment could last forever, pause. Breathe it in. Let it move through you like sunlight through a window.
It won’t last. And that is why it matters.
Just launched: The Vessel’s Youtube Channel
Explore our first video: The Brain Beneath Our Feet — a short-film by shaman Rudá Iandê that challenges where we believe intelligence comes from.
Instead of looking to the stars or machines, Rudá invites us to consider that the first great mind on Earth may have existed without a brain at all… and that the oldest form of thought might be living beneath our feet.
Watch Now:
