Everything is temporary
Situational thinking to battle the fear of permanence
In 2023, I was sick in a way that changed my daily life. Most of my free time was spent in bed and in pain. Since I was working full-time and momming full-time, I tried to keep a brave face. But one afternoon I looked out the window from my bed and saw a mom running on the greenway with her kids. My bravery cracked, and fear seeped through. Thoughts flooded my mind that I’d never have energy to run like that again. That bed-me was forever-me.
That’s what fear does. It freezes your worst moment and expands it to infinity.
Permanent changes are scary because your whole life has to adjust around them. But feelings aren’t permanent. Thoughts definitely aren’t. Pain ebbs and flows.
Life is not one big boulder we’re clinging on to. It’s a beach of many stones, shifting and sorting beneath our feet.
These days, when that fear shows up, I just ask: is this a temporary situation to navigate, or a new existence to endure forever?
Spoiler alert: it’s not forever.
Even the hardest things we endure, the things that alter our lives irrevocably, still change. They don’t stay in that first shocking acute phase forever. They’re impermanent too, shifting a little bit day-by-day.
I did run on that greenway again. I hope you do too, whatever your greenway may be.