Permanent

When you’re a kid you think things will last forever.  Everything is permanent.  My best friend will always be my best friend.  My friend group will always be exactly like it is.  I don’t think that it’s you being illogical.  I think it’s just your inability to see beyond five minutes in the future.  Even folks who are a little more mature, folks that make good grades and smart decisions, aren’t a lot better than everyone else.  Sure, I made good grades and went to college, but so what, in a group of people that couldn’t see more than 5 mins into the future, I could see 6.  Big deal. 

So, you go to college or you join the military or you go to work, and then life starts and not only for you but also for everyone else.  You see very quickly that the folks you thought would always play a big role in your life start to disappear.  Now, don’t get me wrong, you stay acquainted with a precious few, but you don’t know each other like you did.  Not only that but what they think doesn’t seem to matter as much as it used to.  Then what?  Well, you make new friends of course.  College friends or adult friends or whatever you want to call it.  Again you think, this is permanent, and again, it turns out not to be.  Sure, some of your best friends you will make during this period, but again, it’s only a precious few not the multitude that you might expect. 

Somewhere around this time, you get married.  If you are lucky, you’ll fall in love.  You don’t want to go anywhere without them.  You don’t want to do anything without them.  Food doesn’t taste as good when they aren’t there.  Experiences are a waste of time if you can’t share it with them.  You can become obsessive, and I don’t think that’s real.  That’s temporary.  If you are lucky, you’ll fall in love for real.  But if you win the lotto something else will happen.  You’ll learn to be so comfortable with the person that you don’t mind being away from them because you know they will be there when you return.  That you’ll pick up where you left off like picking up an old conversation.  This person will become what I like to call my “left hand”.  Could I live without my left hand?  Sure, I could, but things would be a lot less comfortable.  That doesn’t sound as romantic as what they show in the movies, but trust me, it is.  In fact, it’s way more so.  It’s commitment.  It’s trust.  It’s comfort.  And again, you think, this is permanent, but it’s not.  Of course, you don’t know that yet though, so what do you do?  You take this “left hand”, and together, you form some more people to be part of your world.  These people will become your heart.  Not just your heart either, but the “left hand’s” heart as well.  You’d lay down in traffic for them.  Give them anything that you can.  Not anything to keep them happy, but certainly anything they need.  They get older and grow stronger, and right about the time you’ve got it all under control and think everything is cool, what happens?  They leave.  They find “left hands” of their own.  Make more creatures and the spinning wheel spins.  Eventually, you find out that even the “left hand” isn’t permanent.  Sure, some folks lose there’s to life, work, and stress, but most people don’t.  Most people discover new things to worry about.  Scary words like “cancer” and “Alzheimer’s” and “heart disease” and… well, you get the idea.  If you live long enough, you lose your “left hand”.  You’ll watch them put her in the ground, and you’ll walk away crippled for the rest of your life.  A wound that won’t heal.  So again… not permanent. 

Over the last few years, I’ve realize that all my life, I’ve been looking for something permanent.  I long for it.  What’s more, I think everyone else does, too.  How else do you explain people’s actions?  People invest tons of time and money into their family, their children, and probably worst of all their property.  I think it’s the search for something significant.  Something that will outlast yourself.  Your legacy.  Your permanent record.  And, in the end, it’s all for nothing.  Look at the Romans.  In their time, they ruled the known World.  Of course, it wasn’t the whole world, but it was the only part that mattered.  They ruled it all.  They had incredible food, culture, buildings, history, monuments… A couple of years ago, Jess and I went to Rome and when you see the old City, some of it is left, but most of it is a pile of stones.  And that’s the greatest civilization in history.  If they can’t achieve it, what chance do you have? 

Sounds depressing doesn’t it?  It is.  If you think about it, it’s all a big nothing.  Truly, it’s all a big nothing.  And if you think about that too long… well… that’ll make you feel pretty bad.  That’s where I’ve been for the last few years.  I had a really hard time getting past it, and then, everything changed.  I figured out that there is something permanent.  It was so obvious, I really felt stupid when I realized it.  The present.  The present is definitely permanent.  Why?  Because it’s always here.  You don’t ever live in the future do you?  What about the past?  Nope.  It’s always the present.  All you ever really have is the moment you are in.  Everything you own, everything you have can be taken away, but not this moment.  This second.  That’s always here.  True happiness lies in owning it.  Every breath.  Every heartbeat.  Having realized that has really changed me.  I guess I always knew it, but really grasping it changed my attitude.  It changed my outlook.  I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.  I don’t worry as much about the past or the future as I used to.  Why?  Because they aren’t permanent, even the past changes, based on what happens right now.  It’s like Eddie Vedder said, “It makes much more sense to live in the present tense.”  Or maybe even better yet, C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”