It’s November of 1996, and I’m crying in the study of my apartment.
I’ve just passed my sixth year of living in Austin, having escaped the chaos of my coastal upbringing. The greatest gift my father ever gave to me was the freedom to be me, whoever and wherever that was. Nowhere in my home county was without triggers, or as I called them then, “ghosts.” Arm around my shoulder, Dad leaned in and explained that Austin was full of people “like you,” and that I should consider living there.
Six years later, I’m newly married, newly sober, and have the bachelor’s degree I’ve assumed I’m simply not smart enough for. My marriage is troubled from the outset, the career in audio engineering I’ve dreamed of is gone due to my hearing impairment, and I’m writing a fictionalized autobiography posing as a novel called Juke. On an early Mac computer, I’m committing my memories to “paper,” a cathartic, gut-wrenching process. The coastal chaos feels more believable as fiction. It is another decade before I will learn that this is effectively narrative therapy.
The Beatles Anthology 3, newly released, plays as I craft characters out of the heroes and villains of my youth.
A demo version of George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” murmurs from the CD player. Rendered with voice and soft electric guitar, Harrison sings, “All things must pass. None of life’s strings can last.”
And though I’ve heard this song for decades, I find myself listening for the first time: Impermanence is the only constant. The only thing that doesn’t change is change. All pain will fade away. All joy too. Every relationship, every moment, it all passes.
I’m floored by the sheer weight of the message, and no one else on the planet knows I’m having this life-changing moment. It is an existential blow, from my sternum to my soul.
In the coming years it is sometimes the only thing that saves me. Even today as I work to cope with this post-estrangement life, I hear George’s voice reminding me that one way or another, this will pass. Will it be via loving reunion? Via the end of this lifespan? Some other way? No one can say. But on the worst of these days, I find value in remembering the impermanence of even my suffering.
