On Permanance

A mind haunted by permanent and inpermanent things.

Months back I wrote a post detailing the benefits of a personal library. One of the most prominent reasons I made was the tangibility of books over digital files and PDFs. But as I write this on the final day of the school year, my mind wanders to the inpermanence of well, everything.

I’m typing this now as my students are tossing out the materials from our class in front of me: the notes, the handouts, even an entire binder. Their Chromebooks are being returned, their textbooks now line the drawers. Some of them are talking about their summer plans while others have their AirPods in, heads resting on their desks.

Time is a cruel, beautiful thing. I have spent an entire year with these students in my room (a small class, only 10 students), and yet while it has felt like an eternity, they’ll all be gone soon. Never again will these 11 (including myself) stand in this classroom learning about this subject. In 12 months these students will pass from these halls forever, graduating onto (hopefully) bigger and better things. Each day has felt like an eternity, yet I look back and wonder where all the moments went

And then one day, too, I shall leave this school forever. Onto…something else, I suppose.

To get incredibly morbid for a moment: one day I’ll die. All the people who knew me, loved me, remembered me…dead and gone.

It’ll all be gone.

My childhood home is occupied by others.

The house my parents built will one day be owned by others, if not torn down completely.

All my possessions: consigned to the trash, donated, or purchased by others.

Everybody dies, and everything ends.

I am a man of faith - I know that there exists a realm beyond this small, tangible one. Greater men and women than I have philosophized and rhapsodized about that very point for thousands of years. I rejoice in what is to come. Yet in my own small, weak, undisciplined way…part of me will miss what has been or is.

Nostalgia is a killer - named after nostos, the Greek homecoming of heroes like Odysseus. But what is home when everything is transitory?

There’s something about modern society that seems to infect the air, cheapening and despersonalizing everything. Traditions and rituals cast aside in the name of convenience. Heirlooms discarded in the name of minimalism and downsizing.

This nostalgic waxing is imperfect, and as I sit here in this beautiful pain my mind wanders to, of all things, Kung Fu Panda:

I once heard it said that the anxious fret about the future while the depressed ruminate on the past. To be mindful, to live in the present, is the only way to maintain one’s sanity.

Well, I’m a history teacher. Looking to the past is what I do.

I’m also a father, worried about what the future holds for my son and my (God-willing) other future children.

I guess I’ll have to live by the words of Emperor Turhan from Babylon 5:

The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last, fragile moment. To choose something better, to make a difference, as you say. And I intend to do just that.

Permanence and inpermanence will do their dance within my mind, but I choose the middle course.

Until next time, folks.