For those with a background in the sciences this may seem obvious. But, importantly, everything is always in change. Everything….every little constituent of every little insignificant part of every random thing in existence….everything is dynamic. Your unhappiness and your job satisfaction and your boss’s eyebrows, each one of them, is always in change. Every part of every molecule of every cell in your body is continuously changing, moving, vibrating, growing (and dying!)
This is not good nor bad, it just is. It means that whatever is troubling you is evolving, the topic itself, your ability to interact with it, and your feelings about it. A powerful restatement of this concept is found in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This important lesson from physics states that the product (multiplication) of the uncertainty in an objects position and the uncertainty in its velocity is roughly a constant, a tiny number with a fancy name. What this means that it the harder and harder we try to nail down where something is the less we know about where it is going. Conversely, the more we work to know just where it is going the less we know about where it is. This is the fuzziness of existence. If we know that we are really really unhappy (position) we have no clue how this will be changing in the future (velocity).
If we are unimaginably unhappy we know that this is only temporary as it has changed by the time we complete our thought of simply acknowledging its existence. But, what goes up must come down. If we find ourselves ecstatic over the state of our relationships, job, health, and privilege, we know that not a single one of these items is static….they are changing, evolving or devolving. A colloquialism for this is to “not rest on your laurels”. Just as we need not worry that our unhappiness is permanent, so to do we need to acknowledge that all the parts of our life that provide joy cannot be left on auto-pilot.
Fortunately, contentment is not a purely symmetric condition. Sentient being wiring is such that for most of us, when we find ourselves in a state of discontent, depression, left palm on a hot stove, tight fitting shoes, we move away from it, we instinctively act to restore balance and contentment. But we can augment this with the realization, maybe re-enforced through writing or meditation or mantra, “this too shall pass”. For those that deal with depression, anxiety, or other mood disorders, this realization can be powerful. The flip side of this, needing “support” to remain happy or content is as also true, but it can be as simple as slowing down and breathing, getting out of our heads and into our bodies.
Every moment has the potential to be great. Sure it has the potential to be awful, but it has the potential to be great! And even if it is not great, it is guaranteed that it all changes always. We obviously want to help out where we can in life, but we can take comfort in knowing that everything that we want to change is already doing so all by itself!
