As I was waiting for my flight at the airport in Munich earlier this week, I thought about how airports actually show the Buddhist concept of impermanence in an interesting way. How nothing is permanent, everything is constantly in motion, nothing stays the same.
When you go to the airport it is usually to either go traveling yourself, or to drop off or pick up a loved one. You don’t have to go through the usual hum of life, the boringness of work. Something new and exciting is awaiting on the other side of the flight. Or somebody is waiting on the other side of the glass doors.
You don’t stay in one place, you leave the one city behind and move on to the next one. You leave, arrive, move around, travel, you will gain new experiences. Especially when you go on a long trip, like a backpacking world trip, you will evolve as a person, you will discover new sides of yourself, you will change.
You loved one is leaving, but as you say goodbye with a tear in your eye you know he or she is coming back again. This seperation is just temporary, it is impermanent. And when you wait at the airport for your loved one, you know he or she is almost back in your arms again, and the wait is done, the seperation is over. And you remember the old saying: This too shall pass.
Your feelings aren’t permanent either. You stress out while packing your suitcase, you look forward to the traveling, you stress out getting to the airport on time, you cry saying goodbye to your loved ones, you stress before getting through customs, you feel relaxed when you’re through 10 seconds later, everything is fine and you have plenty of time to kill. And when you arrive after your flight, you feel that tiny pang of ‘will my suitcase arrive’. And if it’s there, that nobody else will mistake your suitcase for theirs and you end up with somebody elses. You feel anxious, up until the moment you see your suitcase coming around the corner on the luggage belt. And you can relax again, you’ve really arrived.
It is not always easy to accept impermanence, we always want things and people to stay the same. We don’t want to change, get older, get wrinkles, get gray hair. We don’t want our favorite jeans to tear and have to be thrown away. We want to hold on to things and people as they are, but change is always there. And actually, wouldn’t it be boring if everything would stay the same? Wouldn’t it be less exciting if you couldn’t develop into someone better, someone new, someone different? To know you can change things for yourself to be better? To make a mistake and be able to recover from it? Sometimes good things have to fall apart, so that better things can fall together.
The only thing that is constant is change, impermanence. And: “Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.” (Thich Nhat Hanh) So make the most of it!
PS I guess a butterfly is a nice symbol here for change.
Much love, The Curious Butterfly 🙂
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