I recently received a voicemail from my sister in which she said that she needed to talk to me about something important. I phoned her immediately and she delivered some startling news. She told me that she had heard that my former band director from high school was ill with esophageal cancer. Knowing the seriousness of this sort of cancer, I despaired. I immediately wrote a letter to him to say all of the things I’d neglected to say over the years, and to apologize for the fact that I never kept in touch.
I had taken his life for granted. This was a man who had supported me and acted as a mentor to me during some of the hardest periods of my life. His actions after I quit college pulled me out of a deep depression. I was always grateful to him, but I never did anything about it until his survival was threatened in my mind.
Intellectually, I knew that life was impermanent. I knew my friend and mentor was old and I knew that nothing guaranteed that either of us would survive to say or hear the things which hadn’t been said. Intellectually, all of this was in my head, but I never took it into my heart and took action. I thought about him quite often for years, but I always put off action. I told myself I’d do it soon.
Impermanence is a concept that we all understand, yet most of us never take it to heart. We live our lives never really cherishing our loved ones enough. We never quite manage to do everything we would have liked in order to show our love and appreciation for them. We never quite live in the moment enough to make them happy or to show our appreciation for them in the present. Instead we wait for another chance at it tomorrow, the day after or weeks to months later. We mourn not only their loss when they are gone, but also the loss of all of the opportunities we missed.
Another example of this sort of problem can be found in the way certain countries and cultures pursue foreign interests in increasingly more extreme and aggressive ways in order to avoid lifestyle changes (or to gain changes which they perceive they need) in their population. This can cause lasting damages in the form of war, environmental damage or economic hardship at home or in other areas. The price of comfort in one culture becomes a the suffering of another. This of course eventually comes back to the original perpetrator because one cannot cause suffering without eventually feeling that suffering just as keenly oneself. We must ask ourselves in these situations whether a slight change in our own lives might not benefit us all more in the long term.
The less keenly we feel impermanence in each moment, the more keenly we shall feel loss when the nature of that impermanence is revealed to us. Whether this is the loss of a loved one, a change of lifestyle or a drastic difference in our daily schedule, holding on to every aspect of our lives as if they were static and permanent leaves our hearts ever more open to the pain and suffering of loss.
With one breath in, we experience one moment. With one breath out, that moment has passed and another has taken its place. In the spirit of cherishing each moment and each person or experience dear to us, take the time to be mindful of each moment. Focus on everything you do with your whole being. If you are listening to a loved one, truly listen. If you are eating an apple, immerse yourself in the sensory experience. When walking outdoors, take time to appreciate the sky, the wind, the trees. Feel them, smell them, appreciate their colors. With each breath in or out, make a mental note of that breath. Revel in each moment and you shall come to enjoy each experience more and more, leaving the clutter of past behind and not stretching beyond your reach to the future. The past is gone and the future is unknowable, and you only have this moment once. What will you do with it?