If there were ever a set a laws or truths to the universe or life itself, this would be one of them: “This too shall pass.” All of life is inherently impermanent, and there is a true surrender to embracing this concept. I didn’t always believe this to be the case. In fact, when I was stuck in the midst of my deepest moments of depression, this notion couldn’t be further from the truth.
My experience of suffering actually proved the opposite to be true for me. I believed with all my heart that I would always be like this. That depression was just something I was born with, and there was nothing wrong with that.. but, nevertheless I was basically a passive victim to it all. But one of the most cathartic words spoken to me during my days suffering was by my dad, who constantly reminded me that “things have a way of working themselves out.”
I didn’t want to believe it, everything seemed so hopeless. But I still nodded my head in agreement, because on some level his words resonated with the deepest parts of my soul that even my chronically negative intellect could not deny. The more and more times I came out alive, well and generally okay after an episode of me telling myself “everything is fucked”, the more his words started to become more than just words to me.
The notion that things have a way of working themselves out seemed to be just a fundamental law of life itself. I didn’t always know how the hell they would work out, but they always did. And this is not to be misinterpreted as everything suddenly became all sunshine and rainbows and I was dancing in fields of wildflowers. That’s not what happens. But he was right: I was always generally okay. I just was. I thought I wasn’t, and that I would never be.. and then I just was. Eventually. Always.
This also speaks to the Buddhism notion of impermanence. Everything in life, both good and bad, is inherently impermanent. You can apply that to anything and everything and extrapolate that to the entirety of life itself. You will eventually die. Everyone will. That’s just the way it is. Even the most permanent of structures will in time eventually crumble into nothingness. It’s not bad, it’s not wrong and it is absolutely and perfectly designed to be exactly in this way. We don’t get to take any of this with us to whatever lies on the “other side”.
Equanimity
The more you begin to understand this (and really get with it), the more everything starts to have a ‘suchness’ about it. Call it equanimity. Nothing and everything is neither good nor bad. It just is. Until it is not, and then something else presents itself as the most real thing you’ve ever known. The past becomes the past. A mere figment of your memory. The future a mere figment of your imagination, along with all the inaccuracies that go along with that. The only moment that actually matters, is the present. Right here, right now.
And there is a tremendous freedom and surrender in that. Because you can now at least intellectually rationalize that whatever hell you are going through right now will eventually pass, with the full potential to eventually transform into something you can’t even imagine. It’s impossible to do so intellectually. But every potentiality does exist, and you can breathe into that as deeply as required to get you through the moments where you just don’t know what in the hell you are supposed to do with all these powerful feelings and emotions.
You can give yourself permission to just feel them fully, so that they at least have a path to express themselves and move through you, rather than become another dark, unprocessed trauma that lives inside of you. This too shall pass.. it just will.