The Upside of Impermanence
A positive spin on sometimes depressing thoughts
Beauty is fleeting, youth is fleeting. When we are young, we don’t ponder this, but as we get older the thought inevitably occurs that there are fewer days ahead of us than behind us. In other words, life is impermanent.
Artist Tyrone Wright (AKA ‘Rone’) expressed this idea in an art project he called ‘Empty.’ Essentially, Rone painted large portraits of beautiful women in old buildings that were falling apart, reminding us that beauty and life are fleeting and doing so in a very provocative way.
According to art historian Gerard Baldwin Brown in an essay he penned in 1874, these questions have been with us for a while, certainly since the ancient Greeks and Aristotle ( 384–322 BC) who, according to Brown, understood ‘the passing away of beauty, the haunting ghost of decay dogging over the heels of hardly-won perfection.’
It seems to me that the artist Rone takes on this same question by relating the fleeting nature of beauty to our attempts at ‘permanent’ civilization. By juxtaposing youthful beauty alongside age and decline, he also shows us that these seemingly unrelated things are intrinsically interwoven.
In philosophy, this is known as ‘the Unity of Opposites.’ Again, we can turn to the Greeks for inspiration. The pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander (c. 610-546 BC) suggested that every element is connected to its opposite and as a result that the entire universe is involved in a ‘continual war of opposites.’ His student Anaximenes (c. 586-526 BC) gave a somewhat less violent interpretation by seeing this ‘war’ as a continuum of change.
In other words, all is the result of cause and effect — or as the Buddhists and Hindus might put it, karma. One thing leads to another in an unending causal chain — becomes its opposite you might say — in a continual flow of change.
Orson Welles captured a realization of fleeting beauty quite nicely in his masterful film Citizen Kane (1941). The accountant Bernstein, now the Chairman of the Board of Kane’s company, reflects on one brief moment during a ferry ride from New Jersey where he saw a beautiful woman for only a few seconds but had continued to think of that young woman ever since.
In the 17th Century, Dutch artists expressed this same sense of the fragility and beauty of life in what would become known as the genre named vanitas. These artists would, for example, contrast symbols of wealth and power with those of death and decay.
Paintings of this era would also juxtapose images of delicate beauty with those of impermanence, such as a human skull. The skull stood as a reminder of death and change —like Rone’s art, they demonstrate how the impermanent nature of beauty leads to inevitable decay and decline. And yet, the paintings have a beauty to them at the moment they are perceived.
Interestingly, the translation of the Latin word ‘vanitas’ means ‘vain’ or ‘empty’ or ‘futile’ and brings us back to the name of Rone’s art project that is most certainly a modern, and quite conscious, return to the same idea.
Now, why does any of this matter? Probably because a certain sense of wisdom might come of it. A wisdom that could, perhaps, put a perspective on how we cling to ideas, people, and things when taking a more detached approach might give us more peace of mind and improve our mental state. But you say — it’s all so depressing! But is it? Is there an upside?
There might be. Realizations of impermanence can lead, interestingly, to other responses outside of a desire to throw oneself off a bridge. For example, we might feel gratitude for all the beauty we have seen, or become more awake to the vivid aliveness that surrounds us at every moment.
Ironically, such realizations can take us away from anger and frustration to reconciliation with life as it is — the continual change that confronts us individually and collectively that will never be static. In other words, whatever is will certainly change into something else.
For a concrete example, let’s consider the idealism of youth that often leads to bitter disillusionment. Seen in a different light, youthful idealism does not necessarily need to turn bitter but rather can lead to acceptance of things as they are — understanding that one’s youthful idealism is a necessary first step, perhaps, toward this acceptance.
Moreover, accepting that idealism is on some level futile can lend a certain poignant beauty to our idealistic pursuits, like a sand mandala that the creator knows will be annihilated. Let me explain.
In Tibetan Buddhism, during the Kalachakra initiation, the monks spend days creating a beautiful mandala of the Kalachakra Deity using colorful sand. At the end of the initiation, the Dalai Lama runs his hand through the sand mandala, destroying it.
It is a form of vanitas — a way to demonstrate the fleeting nature of all things. The sand mandala may then be taken ceremonially to a body of water — a river perhaps — and scattered in the rushing water. Having witnessed such a ceremony first hand I must say there is a certain moving profundity to the whole process.
I have had other experiences of vanitas — personal and fleeting moments that remind me of this truth. When reflecting on the past, some moments of transitory beauty are still embedded in my mind decades later.
I must have been no more than sixteen and had befriended my father’s friend and was working for him. He was about thirty, and I remember standing with him just outside of his apartment, waiting for his estranged wife to arrive (they had recently separated). She seemed intent on winning him back.
As she arrived and walked toward us, she unfurled her hair and shook it loose in a rather stunning display, looking very much like one of Rone’s portraits. It was, to say the least, a fleeting moment of but a few seconds, but has been embedded in my mind ever since. That said, my friend and his wife never reconciled.
Things evolve, things change; life evolves, we change. Eventually, we are no more. Life is all change, all vanitas, all fleeting. I suggest we should not all give up and become cynics as a result; rather, we should celebrate, as winter is always followed by spring.
References
Gerard Baldwin Brown, The Chancellor’s English Essay, 1874
Artist Shows Off The Fleeting Nature of Beauty With Crumbling Portraits, The Mind Circle
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, Bernstein’s Speech
Pre-Socratic Philosophy: The Milesians, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Anaximander and his student Anaximenes)
An Introduction to Vanitas Painting, The Thought Co
Buddhist Mandala’s creation, destruction symbolic of fleeting life, AL.com
Images courtesy of Adobe Stock, Creative Commons, Wikipedia or as attributed.
