Field Guide to
What Really Matters:
Impermanence

When I was quite young, I loved to pick dandelions in our yard and use them to adorn the cakes and cookies I made from my mud “bakery” underneath our juniper tree. And when the yellow blossoms went to seed, I was mesmerized by their tiny white puffballs that looked like parachutes and glistened in the sun. I eagerly picked a handful only to find that they quickly disintegrated in my grasp. My father showed me how to hold them gently and release the seeds with a puff of air so I could watch them travel on the breeze and spread to new locations, each carrying a special wish.

 

I learned that life can be fragile and beautiful things can be broken if we aren’t careful with them, which was my first lesson in impermanence. Within a few years my older cousin would die in an auto accident and a few more years after that my classmate would die from a fall while hiking in the mountains. I learned that even our own lives are fragile and survival is not guaranteed.

 

On countless hunting and fishing trips my father taught me about the cycle of life—that some things die so that others can live. This was a hard lesson but Dad reminded me to always be grateful for the plants and animals that gave up their lives so that I could be nourished. And later I learned the unspoken part of that cycle—one day my own body will become the source of nourishment for other life.

 

These were the lessons of impermanence—that nothing lasts and everything changes. I was learning how to cope with that reality in my own life here on planet Earth.

 

When I saw a sequoia tree that was over 3,200 years old and learned that the Rocky Mountains where I grew up had existed for 50-80 million years I began to wonder if humans—with our brief lives of 100 years or less—even matter at all. On a planet that is 4.5 billion years old, in a cosmos that has probably existed for 13.8 billion years, the presence of human life is just an insignificant blip—barely even detectable on the timeline of the universe.  

In the vastness of all that exists how could our miniscule, fragile, and fleeting lives have any real meaning or importance?

 

And yet our tiny lives are essential. Our existence--as improbable and precarious as it is--allows the universe to know itself. We possess what the universe itself lack: eyes to behold beauty, ears to hear the music of the spheres, a mouth and nose to taste and smell flowers and food, sensors to feel the textures of existence; a mind and body that can contemplate and laugh and grieve and weep. 

 

We are the meaning-makers for the entire universe—a lesson I learned from watching surfers at the beach.

Consider the rolling swells of the ocean that crash against the shore and retreat, dissipating and gathering energy for no purpose other than to exist.  A surfboard left alone in those waves would be tossed and battered and eventually destroyed by the force of the water. But when a human mounts that surfboard and brings intention, attunement, and balance … suddenly the board, the wave, and the human become one for a brief glorious moment.

 

Human consciousness steps into chaos and gives meaning and purpose to the seeming randomness of nature. The wave, the board, and the human can each fulfill a unique and beautiful purpose when they flow together … and this why our existence in the universe is essential.

 

Our tiny lives are precious - and that’s perhaps the most important thing we can learn.

 

We cannot control the massive waves of change, health crises, or the loss of our loved ones. If we try to resist them like a rocky cliff, or drift mindlessly like an empty surfboard, we get battered. But if we bring our full presence, our love, and our memories to the moment, we can ride the wave. 

 

We can turn the terrifying randomness of impermanence into a brief, magnificent masterpiece.

We are here for only a moment.

But it is a moment that matters above all else.