I used to use tattoos as a measurement of permanence – as in “Well, it’s not like it’s a tattoo or anything.” But recently I’ve been thinking, “Nah. It’s all temporary.”

Yes, even the tattoos.

How? They’re attached to a body, and that body – this body – is… fleeting. Everything attached or associated with it is just passing through.

No, it’s not a particularly original thought. The Buddha was onto it a long time ago, hence the philosophy of Impermanence central to Buddhist teaching. Basically it says that nothing of the earth is fixed and permanent; the only thing we can truly verify about our existence is that it’s costantly changing.

Everything is always becoming something else. Even our cells, relentlessly dividing every second our lives means that technically, we are literally not even the same person we were just minutes ago. Change – death, of a kind, as what was passes - is continuous and unavoidable. The seed is not the tree and all that.

Holding a deeper knowledge that “this too shall pass” – really just a poetic version of “it’s all temporary” – has gotten (is getting) me through a lot of dark, awkward times.

Don’t get me wrong: knowing a situation is temporary doesn’t save you from feeling all the feels or falling prey to the belief you’ll be there forever. To the contrary, you still have to dig deep to endure what can feel like bottomless despair. It’s learning to trust you’re moving through it, can move through it that’s the difference. As I approach 50, it’s also the experience of having gone through the ringer many, many times and survived it - so I can and will again.

Of course enduring, feeling, allowing all those anguished feelings doesn’t make them disappear. Touching back to Buddha, the feelings can’t help but change. The sharp edges dull; the shape of the thing shifts and flattens and consumes you less.

We’ve all set up camp in the well of hopelessness at some point and I can tell you from personal experience it quite literally drains the life from you. To this point, I’m forever conjuring Churchill: “When you’re going through hell – keep going.”

Depressive, desperate feelings are like spiders suddenly dropped in your lap – you want them to be anywhere but on you. But sometimes, if you freak out and flail about a panicked spider might end up trapped in your hair or down your shirt instead (OHMYGOD). On the other hand, if you can calm down and let the things go, gently helping them along, they all just disappear back into the universal web.

An article titled “You’ll be Happier If You Let Yourself Feel Bad” recently caught my attention because it speaks exactly to this point. Basically proving the spider analogy scientifically, studies show that “emotions are naturally short-lived experiences,” and “if we let them wash over us instead of trying to push them away, these emotional experiences would actually pass relatively quickly.” The take-home? When you can calm down and accept negative emotions without judgement, they run their natural and relatively short-lived course vs actually getting worse by all your “get off me” contortions. Because who’s kidding who: No one wants misery stuck in their hair.

How about that? Happiness isn’t the absence of negative emotions but the acceptance of them!

Radical, baby.

Easier said than done, too.

Besides the fact that it’s tough to stay non-judgmental and trusting with a lap full of emotional spiders, we humans are predisposed to put greatest stock in all things negative neurobiologically!

I’m talking here about our so-called “negativity bias,” where the actual wiring of our brains is designed to default to the negative. It’s what makes us focus on what we haven’t done in a day, for instance, instead of we we’ve accomplished; what keeps a cringe-inducing memory from years ago fresh in our memories or alternately, what makes us believe we’re going to be in a hopeless place indefinitely.

What’s going on in our brains when this happens? As Dr.Rick Hanson writes, “not only does negative stimuli trigger more neural activity, but research shows negativity is detected more quickly and easily. The amygdala — the brain region that regulates emotion and motivation — uses about two-thirds of its neurons to detect BAD news! “ (caps mine)

Apparently the negativity bias helped our ancestors make intelligent decisions in high-risk situations, thereby increasing the likelihood they’d survive long enough to pass on their genes. So our brains evolved to respond more strongly to negative stimulus than positive.

Thanks evolution. Thanks a lot.

But what to do?

Rewire your brain, that’s what. And yes, you can so!

Neuroplasticity, friends. I’m talking here about “the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.” Yes, your brain can become better attuned to positivity, and no, age is not a deterrent.

One key way to do this is to spend more time “soaking in positive experiences” - even small ones. Dr. Hanson suggests taking 20 to 30 seconds to really take in your happy dog, a great friend, a beautiful sky, etc. Put another way, taking the time to appreciate that everything is temporary - even this small lovely/happy/touching moment, person or thing - reinforces positive patterns in your brain. You’re carving new grooves in your neural LP!

When in a positive or pleasant moment, Hanson says to “take the extra 10 seconds required for the transfer to occur from short-term memory buffers to long-term storage.” In so doing you’re growing your brain’s inner strength by intentionally creating a deeply rooted base of positive memories.

All things are temporary. The awful, the great, the body itself. By not judging and allowing yourself to feel the awful, it evolves into something else more quickly. By willfully being in the sunshine-moments of your life, you bolster your predisposition to more of the same - and develop a gratitude consciousness, besides.

The only constant, as Buddha might say, is change. All of life is an ever-moving river and all of life is better when you can stand in the flow.