Ask Stoics guided-practice preview · 3 min
Contemplating Impermanence
Picture the current of time and loosen your grip on what passes.
This page explains what the exercise is for, shows the exact Stoic source behind it, and previews the steps. Open the separate Practice App when you are ready to work through it interactively.
Use when: clinging, change, loss, transition
Open the AppWhat you will do
How this guided practice works
- 1Read the frame
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.
- 2Run the exercise
Picture a great river, moving steadily past you. Everything you can name is in that current. The things you own. The moods you're in. The people you love. Your own body. All of it, flowing. Upstream is the past — already gone, out of sight. Downstream is the future — not here yet. All you ever actually hold is this one moment on the bank, and it, too, is moving. Now bring to mind the thing you've been gripping tightly. See it set down gently onto the water. The river was always going to carry it off. Nothing in it was ever yours to keep — only yours to hold well, for a while. There's nothing fixed in the current to anchor all your hopes to. And strangely, that's a relief. You can stop bracing against the flow. You can let it move.
- 3Record what you notice
What are you gripping that the river will carry off anyway?
- 4Choose the next action
What would you do differently today if you truly held this loosely, on loan?