Good or bad, joyful or tragic, ease or challenge - it won't always be this way. There is a guarantee in all of life, and that guarantee is change. Everything is temporary.

Our own existence is temporary. We live and die. Childhood is temporary. So are relationships - even the ones that last will change, grow, and adjust with new circumstances and new perspectives. When something is good, I want it to remain. When something feels bad, I want it to pass quickly. Some challenging moments seem to drag on forever while exhilarating weekends fly by so quickly.

I think back to life before Covid. It was a way of life I took for granted, never imagining that we would be two years into a new existence made up of masks, Zoom meetings, and social distancing. Even subtle shifts in my mind have occurred when it comes to people, crowds, and my own immune system. The person I was before Covid no longer exists. Even if the virus disappeared today, parts of me are forever changed by the experience.

At my parents house this afternoon I flipped through a stack of old photos, which spanned my entire childhood. Me as a baby. My sister and I before our brother was born. My parents before any of us were born. Then High School, our first car, and different home remodels. The dog we got when I was 8 and who died when I was in college.

It won't always be this way. "It" is anything and everything you are experiencing right now. Time is a guarantee, and none of us are exempt. This is true of things we want to stay forever, and things we wish would just go away.

BUT, there is a part of us that defies time, logic, and the guarantee that everything is temporary. And that is our true Self, our essence, and our center. Our essence is the part of us beneath every single layer of self - beneath our age, our experiences, our labels, our roles, and our beliefs. Our center is indestructible. The truth of who we are is unbreakable, and unchanging. This is the part of us that cannot be affected by outside circumstance, challenge, or tragedy. This is the part of us that has always been, and always will be.

With all change comes growth. As human beings, we change through our experiences, positive or negative. Often, a very challenging experience points us to exactly what we are meant to learn. Often, a very challenging experience brings us in touch with this undeniable center, a center and a truth we may have drifted away from throughout our human life.

When we accept the temporality of life and circumstance, we are able to appreciate everything more. We can motivate through chaos, injury, or setback, because we are assured it is temporary. We can enjoy precious, blissful moments more fully because we know they are temporary. We can also find strength and solace in knowing WE are still in there. That part of our soul that is our truth, our essence, and our center is always there, light or dim, remembered or forgotten, acknowledged or dismissed.

Wisdom happens with age, maybe because we learn over time of the truth of the human experience, that things change, begin and end. Maybe we also learn that we are not necessarily our circumstance - we are not really our age, our appearance, or our roles. With age, we start to wonder if we are something more, something beyond this physical body and rational mind.

You are an energetic force, a pulse that breathes and moves with all of the Universe. You contain a truth that is connected with a forever, non-temporary self. This truth is unique to you. It's ok if you are having a bad day or a bad week. It's ok if you are elated and in a flow. None of it is who you are, and all of it is worth experiencing wholly. Because it won't always be this way.