Travel with Sharlene

It seems our magnificent blue tang, Dory, is dying. She is breathtakingly thin, skeletal if a fish could be such a thing, and can’t eat, despite us attempting to hand feed her. Yes, we refer to Dory as a her. Blame the movie. 

We’ve had Dory ever since we got our marine fish tank, 13 maybe 14 years ago. She was a gift from Mike’s mum, who died 12 years ago, so the fish is well older than that. Dory feels like a very consistent part of our household. A playful splash of brilliant blue that has captured everyone’s attention for well over a decade. 

But she is old. And her time has probably come. I’m unexpectedly sad about her imminent passing. I’m already planning to say a few words when she finally gives up her metaphorical fish ghost and dissipates back into the universe. Rituals matter.

It is a reminder though that everything changes, however permanent they seem. 

The notion of impermanence is a central part of Buddhist teachings, and it is probably one of the more useful doctrines I’ve come across in my haphazard meditation journey. 

Let me be honest here and say this is a mostly theoretical journey. For some inexplicable reason, I can’t seem to commit to even ten minutes of meditation on a daily basis. I intend to meditate far more than I actually do, which is weird because I have a chaotic mind that greatly benefits from this practice.  

But I do listen to endless podcasts about it – my absolute favourite being a series of recorded lectures by one Joseph Goldstein, who honestly feels like the wisest human on the planet. And he is funny. This – listening, learning and applying, I like to think, is a form of meditative practice. The ultimate aim, either way, is to release myself from being tossed around on the whim of my chattering mind.  

You don’t need to gen-up on Buddhism to know that everything changes. You can just look around you. It’s the reality of life. Nothing stays the same, however much we might long for it to do so (when times are good) or wish it would pass (when times are bad). 

In itself, this is not massively insightful. But what it means is. Yes, it means the bad times will pass. But it also means the good times will too. Because everything changes, always, it means that whatever you spend mind time longing for, even if you got it, wouldn’t be a permanent state of affairs. It will pass, like every other moment – and morph into something different. 

Why does this matter? 

Because, unchecked, most of us spend an inordinate amount of mental energy wanting things to be different, and worrying, in equal measure, about things being different. 

And it is a happiness suck. 

We fill our minds with stuff that has nothing to do with the moment we are in, because we forget that life a series of changing moments. All we have is whatever moment we are in. Everything else only exists in the mind. The past is something that exists as a memory in the now. The future is something that exists as an exercise in imagination in the now. All you have is now. 

I spend a lot of my now time in a state of worry. (We could say I cling to what we have now, a recipe for unhappiness in the mind for sure).

I worry about whether the people who love me will still love me tomorrow, or next week or when I’m 63. I worry about something happening to the people I love. I worry about falling off my bicycle and damaging myself in irreparable ways. I worry about my ageing body and getting migraines and having no energy. And I’m totally not in a state of bliss about the fact that my son wants a motor bike license. I worry about that, and he hasn’t even got to the age it could even be a possibility.

Worrying about whether you’re going to lose some or all of whatever you happen to have at any one moment in time is a massive joy-drain. Clinging to what you have is mentally crippling.

Everything changes is a reminder to practice acceptance and gratitude for whatever it is you do have in whatever moment you are. There is no telling or controlling how the universe will turn. But what is certain is that whatever moment you’re in will pass. So, worrying about anything you can’t actually do something about is a complete waste of one of our precious, finite moments we have as conscious beings on the earth. 

It takes practice to remember this and to enact it. That’s really why I should do the meditation practice, rather than just listening to wise old men talk about mind stuff. But my lazy short cut is to try to remember to chant “everything changes” and recite what I can feel grateful for when I find myself in a worry slump. 

And it works, at least in the moment. 

Onwards,

Sharlene

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