Stoic practice · 3 min

Contemplating Impermanence

Picture the current of time and loosen your grip on what passes.

Use when: clinging, change, loss, transition

How the practice works

1. Read 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.
2. Run 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.
3. Record what you notice What are you gripping that the river will carry off anyway?
4. Choose the next action What would you do differently today if you truly held this loosely, on loan?

Primary source: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.43