The Duality of Impermanence: From Dread to Deeper Meaning

You and everyone and everything you love are impermanent. A sobering thought, but one that can be a powerful force driving you to live a flourishing life. The goal of this episode is to help you not only accept impermanence but harness its power. Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

A couple of weeks ago I was meeting with one of my doctoral students at a local coffee shop. A colleague of the students came up and started chatting about a tragedy that had been fallen a mutual acquaintance. This family had been traveling to some event in two vehicles, one following the other. One of the vehicles was struck by a logging truck and two children were killed in a horrific accident. Later we were talking about the long stretch of extreme heat we'd been experiencing. We'd talk about heat a lot in Louisiana, especially in August. My student mentioned that a friend had lost her husband to the heat. Apparently, the poor guy had been out in the yard doing some work, got overheated, came into the house and died.

These incidents made me think about impermanence. I talked briefly about impermanence in episode 57, but that short episode doesn't really do justice to the importance of impermanence in our lives, so I go into a lot more detail here. All things in this life are impermanent and all of us are impermanent, at least as far as this life goes. Everybody you've ever known, everything you've ever known, everything you've ever possessed, at some point all of them will cease to be. The great Stoic Seneca put it this way Remember that all we have is on loan from fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission, indeed without even advance notice. Impermanence is a universal truth, one that can be a sobering, even terrifying, thought.

In the short time you've been listening to this episode. Someone somewhere has lost a loved one, perhaps unexpectedly. Today, someone somewhere will go to work and not come home. Something about this sort of thing can fill you with an existential dread and constant worry about losing someone you care about. Terrifying, I know, but this is only one side of the impermanence coin. The coin has a second side, a side that can help you find greater meaning in your life.

I only gave you the first part of Seneca's quote. He goes on Thus we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever. Nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long. Seneca's given us a wake-up call here, a wake-up call to cherish the time we have while we have it, not out of some sense of anxiety over losing the ones you love, but out of an understanding that the quality and depth of our relationships are what make our time with our loved ones truly meaningful. Being mindful of this can help you better appreciate your loved ones, deepening and enriching your connections with them, leading you to a richer, more flourishing life.

This is the duality of impermanence. Acknowledging impermanence can lead to dread, but can also be a catalyst to a rich, meaningful, flourishing life. Ultimately, impermanence doesn't carry a message of dread. It carries a message of hope. Let's dig into how you can turn impermanence into your own personal message of hope. If you want to live an excellent life, it's absolutely critical that you not only acknowledge impermanence but also embrace it.

This basic idea runs through a lot of religions and philosophical traditions. I'm going to touch on two Buddhism and Stoicism. A core tenet of Buddhism is that all things are impermanent and that suffering comes from too much attachment to these impermanent things. We become attached to things and so we suffer when they're lost. Therefore, accepting impermanence is a key to reducing suffering.

I've already shared some Stoic thoughts on impermanence, but I want to bring up a couple of others. The first is Memento Mori, or Remember that you Will Die. This is almost a mantra among many Stoics, including me. The second one is a little more obscure. It's the idea of preferred indifference.

Briefly, the Stoics believe that some things are good, like virtue and reason. Other things are evil, such as vice, which is the corruption of virtue. Everything else is classified as an indifferent, neither good nor bad. In a moral sense, preferred indifference are things that we don't have to have, since they're not inherently good, but they're nice to have and we ought to enjoy them while we do have them. For example, a high income is a preferred indifferent, since it's great to have but it's not strictly necessary for an excellent life.

There's a danger, with preferred indifference, though, becoming attached to them because we don't fully accept that they are impermanent. So a key aspect of Stoicism is to enjoy things while you can be grateful that you had them for a while, then, if you lose them, move on adapting to life without them. The critical trick to pulling this off, if we can call it a trick, is to accept the impermanence of all things. There's a subtle power to this thinking. Let's assume that you're on board with the importance of enjoying and being grateful for what you have while you have it. Being aware of the impermanence of all things can drive you to spend the time you have with them wisely and to soak all the joy and pleasure you can from that limited time. Let me give you a very personal example.

As regular listeners know, I lost my first wife, debbie, to cancer. Without going into details after she was diagnosed, it soon became clear that our time together was short. As a means of coping, I first accepted this fact. Then I set my mind to two tasks Caring for her as best I could and ensuring that we maximized our time together, and by maximized I mean that we had the best time together that we could. As part of this, I imagined life without her. This spurred me to do all I could to make sure our limited time was as good and fulfilling as it could be. With Debbie's request, we even took a cruise shortly before she passed away. Had I not accepted Debbie's impermanence, I might not have worked as hard as I did at making sure our time was well spent. The last cruise is a good example.

At first I kind of thought we ought to wait until spring break to go, and then I decided no, I don't want to put this off. By the time spring break came around, debbie was gone. I didn't know it at the time, but later I learned that when I imagined life without Debbie, I was practicing what the Stoics call negative visualization. That's the second Stoic concept I want to discuss here. Basically, negative visualization involves mentally picturing some negative event coming to reality. By practicing negative visualization, you prepare yourself for a potentially adverse event so that you can better cope with it, should it actually come to be. In some cases, negative visualization also helps you better appreciate your current circumstance, as it did with Debbie.

Both memento mori and negative visualization are good ways to not just accept impermanence but to embrace its power to live a full life. So I encourage you to recognize your own impermanence so that you use your limited time to live the life you want to live and to make your mark on the world, whatever you want it to be. Also, accept the temporary nature of the preferred indifference in your life so that you can maximize the time you have with them. In a few moments I'll share some specific ways to do both of these. Embracing impermanence can also drive you to live a life of purpose. As I've said repeatedly, an excellent life is a life of purpose and meaning. These two are inextricably linked. How you find meaning is what leads you to your purpose. Serving that purpose is a huge part of what gives your life meaning. Embracing your impermanence can drive you towards tenaciously pursuing purpose and meaning. Your time is short. Don't waste it being adrift. Find your purpose and then let that purpose pilot you to a life of meaning. As I said at Debbie's funeral, it's not the number of pages in the book of one's life that matters, it's what's written on those pages. Her life was short, but its pages were full. If you're still trying to find your purpose, I give some specific insights on developing your purpose in Episode 23. That's available at livewellandflourishcom, slash 23.

Let's talk some more about how to deal with life's inevitable impermanence. My approach involves two elements preparation and coping. Preparing yourself to accept and deal with impermanence and coping with impermanence when you experience it. Negative visualization is an excellent way to prepare for impermanence. I really like this practice because of its multiple benefits. It helps you accept impermanence, it helps prepare you for coping with impermanence and it helps you better appreciate your life.

Reflections on losses you've already experienced can also help you prepare for future losses. Even though it might have been tough at the time, you have survived loss. Think back on some of these losses and what you did to cope with them. Consider which coping strategies worked and which didn't. Think about what you might have done differently. As always with reflection, be careful to be evaluative, not judgmental here. Try to be a bit removed and dispassionate in your analysis. Don't ruminate over how you might have coped better. Remember excellence is a process. An important benefit of this kind of impermanence reflection is to remind you that all things are impermanent. But reflection can also remind you of your own resilience. As podcast guru Dave Jackson says, you've done hard things before.

When you do suffer loss, I find two practices to be particularly helpful. The first is to find the gratitude that lies within loss. You feel sad about a loss because of the pleasure you've gained from your time with whatever you've lost. Without that pleasure, there's really no reason for true grief. Embrace what you've gained by being grateful that fate favored you with the presence of what you've lost, even if your time with it was short. To quote Alfred Lord Tennyson, I hold a true whatever befall I feel it when I sorrow most Is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Shift your focus from the loss to the gain, the gain of the time you did have with whatever or whoever you've lost. By the way, former co-host Andrea and I talked about the relationship between gratitude and grief in Episode 18. I think this is an extremely powerful and important topic, so I urge you to check it out at livewellandflourishcom, slash 18.

The second coping practice I recommend is self-compassion. Loss has a powerful magnetic effect on regret. When you suffer a loss, regretting not making the most of the time you had with someone is a natural reaction. It's really easy to get down on yourself in these situations. Don't do it. It's fine to be reflective and seek growth, but berating yourself for the past is pointless. Show yourself compassion and put your energy where it will do some good.

Before moving on, I want to remind you that sometimes loss may be beyond your ability to cope. In these cases, I urge you to seek professional help. Look, loss can be crushing, so don't be afraid to ask for help. Okay, I feel like I've made my case for embracing impermanence. Let's turn our attention to three things you can do this week to turn impermanence to your advantage. My first recommendation is to buy or create a physical reminder of your own impermanence. I just bought a Memento Mori coin which I'll keep on my desk to remind me of my impermanence and to spur me to spend my time and attention wisely. You can make a sign by a reprint of a piece of art, or use a Memento Mori screensaver. Whatever works for you. Just get something that reminds you that you are impermanent, so you better make the most of the time you have.

Another recommendation is to start practicing negative visualization. Start small. What if you broke your favorite mug or a beloved restaurant closes or your go-to television show is canceled? Pick something relatively trivial and imagine life without it. Then gradually ramp up the importance of the impermanent thing to strengthen your coping muscles. I also recommend trying kind of a twist on this, which I'll call retrospective negative visualization.

Think about something you've lost and how you survived that loss. For example, tracy finally had had enough of my bachelor plate and got rid of it. I love that thing, guess what? In a pretty short time? I hardly missed it, after all, it was just a plate. Finally, take a few minutes each day and write down I am impermanent Physically. Write it down at the top of a page. Then and this is critically important acknowledge the contributions you made to the world that day. These can be small things, a tiny act of kindness, something you did that helped you live your purpose, a tough decision you made that, or even an easy decision you made that aligned with your values, anything that gives you meaning and helps improve the world. Write it down. I'll bet the list it'll be a lot longer than you might have thought. Try to do this every day for the next week to make it part of your daily routine.

I'm going to close with one of my favorite quotes from Seneca Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long the privilege will be ours Until next time. Be well, my friends. I produce, live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourishcom. Until next time.