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Internalise ‘Impermanence’
Reclaiming Indian Philosophy for Our Anxious Age
We focus a great deal on the need (or desire) for everything to be okay, all the time. But the nature of a person’s life is usually like a sine θ curve (Google what that looks like). Life’s always going to swing between highs and lows — that’s just how it is. So it only makes sense to stop holding on so tightly to the idea that everything has to be okay all the time. That expectation is not just unrealistic, it’s a setup for disappointment. And disappointment, if left unchecked, easily spirals into frustration… and before you know it, you’re constantly anxious or living in quiet fear. I am not making all this up, I am referring to ancient wisdom to approach this problem of our age. Bhagavad Gita 8.15 mentions the phrase duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam, which translates to that this world is full of suffering and is impermanent. Now, this isn’t to downplay the beauty or possibilities of life it is far from it. It’s about holding this truth close, using it as a kind of inner compass to make sense of the inevitable highs and lows that come our way.
Would heartbreaks then feel like the end of the world? Would failure sting so deeply? Would we take our lives as seriously as we do? Would we still cling to every identity, every possession, every dream as though the world owed them permanence?
