It really should have been mere platitude at this point, but I keep having to relearn that so many things in life are temporary. I have only recently begun to question whether life, in essence, is just a bunch of temporary experiences strung together over time, whether permanence is really just a myth, and “forever” belongs only to God. I meet people or have experiences so good that, as per my innate nature, I wish to hold onto them for… well, forever; I will them to stay longer. But that’s the thing about it: some things are not meant to be that way: some things aren’t meant to last more than a fleeting moment, to persist more than a while. More than anything else, a large portion of my despondency is built on my own reluctance to embrace the truth that some things, some people are best experienced momentarily, that theirs is to be here only a minute and leave the next, that that’s okay.
And I think that life will get that tad bit easier for me… for us all the sooner we accept this. A huge part of happiness stems from managing our own expectations. Learning to curb the default thought that everything that feels good in the moment ought to be in our lives a long while, that good things must last, is a good place start. Sometimes good in the moment means just that: good for that moment and that moment alone. It is perhaps best to learn to enjoy and appreciate things and people for only as long as they are meant to last, to enjoy them while they are here, to learn that they are best experienced fleetingly, to learn how to let them go when it is time to do so, learn that maybe evanescence is not such a bad thing after all; perhaps it pays more to make peace with the temporariness of life and be expectant of it than it does to naively hope for longevity of everything we come across. We will never be able to foretell what will/should last a lifetime and what will/should not. But we could perhaps save ourselves the despair by always leaving plenty of room in the doorway for... everything/everyone to walk out whenever they wısh to. More than pessimism, that is realism. We probably should not spend an evanescent life chasing permanence. Perhaps we mustn't deny ourselves certain experiences just because they might be temporary. Life itself is fleeting; it is finite. How then can we expect anything within it to last?