Spontaneous Change
I said goodbye to one of my co-workers today. His leaving was a surprise to me, and I think literally everyone at the company felt the same. He parted on good terms, lured by an opportunity that was simply too good to pass up — the perfect opportunity at the perfect time in his life. But even though it was by all accounts perfect and sensible, it was strange watching him walk out the door after having said goodbye, knowing that this was the last time I would see him.
Life is interesting in the way it throws things at you. It’s strange that we get so used to things even though we know deep down that life is impermanent and unpredictable. We can never plan for all the edge cases. There are always loop holes within infinity.
Being confronted by spontaneous change underscores a fundamental truth in life: we cling to a belief in a static existence even when confronted time and time again by the truth of perpetual movement. Life consists of thin slices of experience, and we do our best to string them together in a pattern that we are capable of understanding. People are pretty good at making sense of the ridiculous and the chaotic, and even better at weaving them into personal narratives give the illusion life is consistent and continues in predictable ways.
But then moments you never planned for happen, and you remember the truth. Nothing is forever — each moment is precious in its novelty and its brevity. We are simply walking through a limited series of moments, doing our best to savor the experiences and make sense of them all.
But soon this feeling passes. Each death of an anticipated future is quickly overshadowed the genesis of another. We develop a new plan, thinking out even more moves into the future in hopes that this time the outcome will be different. And the process begins again.
But for that moment where you sit in the silence between futures, you see the world for what it is. And even though you can’t hold onto the feeling for more than a moment, you know what you feel is the absolute truth of the world.