Life: The Endlessly Passing Show

I used to have a beautiful hand painted-sign that read: This too shall pass away. It meant the difficult times I was going through wouldn’t last, which I found hard to believe as I stood in the eye of my personal storm. Eventually, though, the storm did pass, and I moved on with my life. That was my first lesson in the Buddhist concept of impermanence, though I was far from grasping the idea at the time.

It is almost 40 years later. The sign is long gone, but its wisdom remains. Here’s what I have learned: Things change. Life is dynamic, like a river. It just keeps flowing, taking with it experiences we are glad to be rid of and those we had hoped to keep. Nothing is more dramatic proof of that than the recession that is not quite over.

People who were busy living their lives—going to work, enjoying their homes, buying things, watching their kids play soccer—suddenly felt as if they had been hit by a tsunami. Businesses, jobs, homes, income, security, gone—not only here in the U.S., but worldwide. That’s impermanence with a capital I.

A recession, a hurricane, a flood, death or divorce, bankruptcy, and illness are all pretty dramatic ways to learn that things change when we least expect them to. On the flip side, they can change in wonderful ways: a wedding, a new baby, a windfall, a best seller. These are the changes we welcome.

In 1970, a guy named Richard Alpert, who became Ram Dass, wrote a book called Be Here Now. He was trying to tell westerners what Eastern religions have been teaching for centuries: Enjoy now because now is all we have. He was right, of course. Joseph Goldstein, one of the earliest teachers of mindfulness meditation in this country and the author of One Dharma, was more poetic when he wrote: “All experience is part of an endlessly passing show.”

Now, that is a thought to meditate on.

A Celebration of Women

I went to the library, in a big hurry and desperate for a good mystery. Bad combination. All the current, best-selling mysteries were gory (what with that?), and I found myself standing at the new nonfiction section. I’ve always felt that the right book falls into my hands at the exact moment I need to read it, and once again, that’s what happened. Suddenly, I was holding Cokie Roberts’ 10^th anniversary edition of We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters. I left the library with that single little book … well, little, fat, 319-page book.

I'm a big Cokie Roberts fan. I love her voice, her incisive comments, and the breadth of her knowledge about what’s happening on the hill when she appears on NPR. Actually, I'm also a fan of her husband, Steve Roberts, who often subs for Dianne Rehm on NPR. Nobody manages a discussion better than he does. Recently, I have discovered Rebecca Roberts who does the greatest interviews on (you guessed it) NPR. She, too, has a warm, distinctive style. This is one incredible family.

We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters encompasses the personal, the political, and the profound. It is part memoir, part history, but mostly a celebration of women. It weaves intimate stories of Roberts’ own life with those of her amazing family, today’s headliners, and more obscure heroines. Equally comfortable with present day political celebrities and women we may never had heard of, Roberts made them all come alive for me.

I read this book as if it were a revelation, and in many ways, it was. I’ve always known that women are remarkable, but Cokie Roberts brought that home to me in ways I never thought about. We Are Our Mothers Daughters should be required reading in every women’s studies program.

As I reached the last page, I felt renewed pride in being a woman and in the special sisterhood we share with women who came before us and who are making a difference in the world right today. Thank you Cokie!