🌱 Nothing Is Permanent: A Buddhist Perspective

I was sitting in my apartment one quiet evening, headphones on, listening to a monk preaching on YouTube.
Outside, the city hummed; inside, I had a cup of tea cooling on the table.
The monk spoke softly about impermanence - “Everything changes; nothing lasts forever.”
As the steam from my tea drifted and disappeared, the teaching suddenly felt real.

In Buddhism, this isn’t just a poetic saying.
It’s called anicca - the doctrine that all conditioned things are in a constant state of flux.
Our bodies age, our moods shift, relationships grow and fade, empires rise and fall.
The teaching isn’t meant to depress us.
It’s meant to wake us up to reality so we can stop clinging to things as if they’ll never change.

🌊 Why It Matters

When we fight impermanence, we suffer.
We get attached to jobs, possessions, even versions of ourselves, and then feel pain when they inevitably change.
Understanding impermanence helps loosen that grip.
It creates space for gratitude knowing that moments are fleeting makes them more precious and resilience knowing that hard times, too, will pass.

🧘‍♂️ Bringing It Into Daily Life

Here are a few ways I’ve tried to practice this teaching:

• Pause and notice change. The seasons, your breath, your thoughts - nothing stays the same.
• Appreciate the present. If it won’t last, it deserves your full attention now.
• Let go gently. When something ends, remind yourself it was never meant to be permanent.

Impermanence doesn’t mean nothing matters.
It means everything is alive, moving, dynamic.
That night in my apartment, the monk’s words on YouTube faded, but the insight stayed:
when you stop clinging to permanence, you start living more fully in the flow of change.