nothing is fixed

I had the pleasure of attending an online seminar last weekend with Pema Chödrön. She is pretty incredible. You get the sense of the wisdom that just drips off of her.

At one point, well, at many points in the weekend, she said that "nothing is fixed" -- meaning that every in life changes. That they people you love are eventually parted from you. The suffering of life is when we cling to attachments or wish things were different from the way they are.

Then today I had something stressful happen and I started to worry and I realized that I had to let go. I can't do anything about things outside my control except accept that they are exactly the way they are, and to do the next right thing ... in the long conveyor belt of choices and decisions that I make.

It dawned on me that having nothing fixed in the world includes what we consider to be human knowledge. If you could go back in time 100 years, you could safely walk into a classroom and say "everything you are learning is wrong". I would imagine that you could do that today, too. "Attention students, everything you are learning and everything you are thinking is wrong. In 100 years, you will laugh at yourself for believing it. Study hard."

You could do it at a company, especially a new job, you could tell them “If I can have your attention, not only is this pointless, but you are also going about everything wrong. Everything. Start over. Begin again.”

And then they would probably escort you out of the office — and in a hundred years you would be right.