I brought the question to him on a day when things felt particularly heavy. Not because anything catastrophic had happened, but because life had become difficult enough that I could not see beyond it, the way a single loud sound can drown out everything else in a room.
He listened quietly, as he always did, letting me finish before he spoke. Then he smiled. “Have you heard the story about Alexander the Great?”
I shook my head.
“According to a famous story, Alexander once asked one of his advisors for a piece of wisdom that would help him in both times of happiness and times of sorrow.”
“What kind of wisdom?”
“Something that would comfort him during hardship and keep him grounded in success.”
“And what did the advisor tell him?”
He paused, the way he did when he wanted a line to land with full weight. Then he replied, “This too shall pass.”
For a moment, I was disappointed. It sounded too simple. Surely the great conqueror of the world deserved something more profound than that, some elaborate secret rather than a phrase you might find stitched on a cushion.
He must have sensed my reaction, because he laughed. “You don’t seem impressed.”
“Honestly,” I admitted, “it sounds obvious.”
“It is obvious,” he replied. “The problem is that we rarely live as though it is true.”
I thought about that for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“When we are suffering, we unconsciously act as if the suffering is permanent.”
That resonated with me immediately because whenever I am anxious, disappointed, embarrassed, or hurt, the feeling never announces itself as temporary. It feels endless, as though the walls of the moment extend infinitely in every direction.
He continued. “Think about the last major difficulty you faced.” I immediately thought of several: a professional setback that had felt like the end of something, a misunderstanding in a relationship that had cost me sleep, and a long period of uncertainty when nothing seemed to move forward. At the time, each had felt overwhelming, the kind of thing that reorganizes your whole sense of what the future holds.
“Do those things affect you today in the same way?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because time passed.”
He smiled. “Exactly.” Then he leaned back and said something I found genuinely interesting. “The strange thing is that people usually understand this lesson intellectually, but they struggle to remember it emotionally.”
I asked him to explain. “When you’re anxious, your mind acts as if this moment will last forever,” he said. “When you’re sad, it feels permanent. When you’re worried, it feels permanent. When you’re embarrassed, it feels permanent. But none of those things are permanent.”
I remembered something from years ago. I had once been deeply upset over a professional issue, the kind that occupies every idle minute. For weeks, it dominated my thoughts. I replayed conversations I had already gone over a dozen times. I imagined consequences that never arrived. I lost sleep over decisions that, in hindsight, mattered far less than they seemed to at three in the morning. And yet years later, I could barely remember the details, only the vague shape of having once been very upset about something at that job.
When I told him this, he laughed. “Exactly. Most of the things that dominate our minds today will barely occupy them a few years from now.”
Then he surprised me. “You know, the phrase is just as important in success.”
I had never thought about that. “I understand why it helps in hardship,” I said. “But why in success?”
“Because success creates a different illusion.”
“What illusion?”
“The illusion that good things will stay forever.”
I sat quietly because that was true too. When life is going well, we quietly begin to assume it will continue indefinitely: the job, the health, the relationships, the recognition, the comfort, the stability. Without ever deciding to, we begin treating temporary gifts as permanent possessions, as if a person might forget that a rented house is not actually theirs to keep.
He nodded as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “That is why the phrase is so powerful. It comforts you in difficulty and humbles you in success.”
I remembered an elderly man I once knew who had suffered enormous financial losses. At the time, he believed his life had been ruined and that everything he had built was gone for good. Years later, when speaking about that same period, he described it very differently. “Looking back,” he told me, “that was one of the best things that ever happened to me.” When I asked why, he smiled and said simply, “It forced me to become a different person.”
I shared the story with him. He nodded. “You see? At the time, he could only see the pain. Later, he could see the growth.” Then he said something I found myself returning to long after the conversation ended. “The present moment is a terrible place to judge the entire story.”
I laughed. “That sounds true.”
“When you’re standing inside a chapter, you can’t see the whole book.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Then I asked, “If everything goes as planned, doesn’t that make life less meaningful?”
He shook his head immediately. “No. It makes life more meaningful.”
“How?”
He pointed toward the window. “Imagine a sunset.”
“Okay.”
“Would it be as beautiful if it lasted forever?”
I thought about it. Probably not. A sky that stayed gold and pink all day, every day, would eventually become wallpaper, something the eye no longer registered.
“The fact that it ends is part of what makes it precious,” he continued. “A child is small for only a few years. A conversation happens only once, exactly this way, with exactly these people, never to be repeated in quite the same form. A season comes and goes. The very fact that these things pass is what gives them much of their value.”
I had never considered impermanence from that angle before. We usually treat permanence as the thing worth wanting, the goal underlying most of our other goals. Yet so much of what we cherish draws its beauty from being temporary in the first place.
“Then maybe,” I said, “the problem is not that things pass.”
“The problem is that we keep expecting them not to.” He smiled. “I think that’s a big part of it.”
As the conversation drew to a close, I asked him one final question. “What should I do when I’m overwhelmed?”
He paused for a moment. “Ask yourself a simple question.”
“What question?”
“Will this feel as important a year from now?”
I laughed. “That would ease many of my worries.”
“Probably.”
“And if it still matters a year from now?”
“Then deal with it, but remember that even this chapter is not the whole story.”
As I left that day, I kept hearing those words in my mind. “This too shall pass.” Not as an invitation to indifference. Not as an excuse to avoid responsibility. Not as a reason to care less. But as a reminder to keep perspective.
The difficult moments will pass. The joyful moments will pass. The praise will pass. The criticism will pass. The success will pass. The failure will pass. Perhaps wisdom lies in learning to walk through both triumph and trial with the same quiet awareness: “This too shall pass.”
Points for Reflection
- Name the last thing that felt permanent. Recall a difficulty from a few years ago that once felt unbearable. Notice how much of its weight remains today, and what that tells you about the one you’re carrying now.
- Ask the one-year question. For whatever is overwhelming you right now, ask honestly: will this feel exactly this important a year from now? Let the answer change how much of today you give to it.
- Check what you’re treating as permanent. Where in your life, right now, during a season that is going well, are you quietly assuming the good will simply continue? What would it mean to hold it a little more loosely?
- Remember the chapter is not the book. The next time a single moment feels like it defines everything, ask what you might be unable to see simply because you are standing inside it rather than looking back at it.
- Let impermanence add rather than subtract. Choose one thing you love precisely because it does not last, a season, a stage of a child’s life, an ordinary evening, and let that temporariness deepen your attention to it rather than your anxiety about losing it.
