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“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”-Winston Churchill

I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how my mind works. You may ask yourself, “Why bring that up now?”. Well, I am glad you asked. I don’t recall whatever possessed me to think about this very unusual phrase or sentence, not sure which. Now, it is even the title of this story.  

I decided to search for its origin and that’s a story unto itself. It definitely has a biblical feel to it, but nothing definitive can be found. It should be part of the liturgy of every religion. Then, there is the Persian tale, tracing back to the days of Rumi. It was for real used by Abraham Lincoln in a speech. It has a very dubious pedigree, but it just sounds so right, so mystical.

I really started thinking about the words. They spell out a universal truth, one that has captivated me for many, many years. However, I have approached it from the opposite end of the thought spectrum. It’s a different direction for me to be looking at impermanence, the transient nature of everything, making it feel like less of a concept. Everything is passing by us and through, nothing is left behind.

I always think about trying to be in the moment, present and carrying no baggage. I know, I know, good luck on that one. I don’t think I’m neurotic about it. It could get you to keep your head down, focused on the newness of each moment. It also does have a bit of a microscopic feel to it, dissecting one reality slap at a time, losing sight of the view.

There is a ”thoughtfulness energy” required to be present and that’s just how it goes. You gotta do some work. It can be a very shitty investment to hold on to something that’s already gone. Imagine if there was a way to completely loosen your grip on the now? Like it or not, this too shall pass, a cheap shot from the bleachers of my mind.

We live in a psychotically, argumentative society, which seems to be growing progressively worse. I have always thought that a terrific way to bring polar opposites together is to find something that can elicit consensus. Those words are a Universal Truth, exquisitely crafted, an arrow to the heart of the matter. The longer they have stayed with me, the greater the weight of the simple truth.

I think it may have originally come up in the midst of some really bad shit going down for a significant number of a population, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Maybe, it was the idea of providing perspective to those who were suffering. It was probably some old dude, who’d seen it all, turning a phrase for all time. Today, he would have sued for copyright infringement. 

It was a way of acknowledging that the tough stuff will end, but there is more to it than that. Trying to hurry through the bad shit and holding on to the good; therein lies the rub, a phrase with its own story, thank you Shakespeare. More often than not, what we don’t enjoy can take a life time, while pleasure seems so fleeting. 

The truth is it is a swinging pendulum, with no symmetry to be found in its arc or speed. Holding on or pushing away throws you into a limbo like existence, with a bar that gets lower and lower in the dance. Some things pass sooner and others later. So much of that has to do with our personal relationship with that ethereal measurement of time.

Stuff like this has developed a real draw for me, which I honestly don’t think is at all unusual. Christ, I’m going to be 78 in a couple of months and that’s old. No, I have zero fucken interest in “80 being the new 76”. Kiss my ass. It’s old.

“This too shall pass” has such a beautiful grace about it. As I mentioned up above, I have no idea how it came to me or why it did. It makes me look up from the screen right now, panning from the windows on my left to those on my right. I feel the infinitesimally small moves that make up now, each folding on the one before. Those damn four words have a genius about them, goddamn transcendent if you ask me. 

I certainly wonder what the world would ever be like if people embraced the 100% transient nature of their existence and absolutely everything within it. The Buddha shot the beast right between the eyes with the shocking truth that each of us will die. Its perennial denial has metastasized into our continued brutalization of our brothers and sisters and our home, thinking each time will be the exception, blinded from the repetitive nature of our own tragic history.

We are part of something so much larger than ourselves.