The liquid-eyed poet John Keats, dead at 25 from tuberculosis: “There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.” In the same vein, from an old hymn often sung at funerals I presided over when I was in religious life: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, / Bears all its sons away; / They fly forgotten, as a dream / Dies at the opening day.” No-one and nothing stay the same. Not even for an instant.
Life is first and foremost discontinuous. From this derives our fear and anxiety.
As a person, a mere mind/body, I’m a bundle of memories and habits, fears and desires, obsessions and aversions, likes and dislikes. This is just a temporary arrangement. I am not a carry-on.
So then, how to tell the difference between the true and the false, the real and the unreal? Whatever has a beginning and an end is false. All else is true. From A Course in Miracles: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.”
Everything begins and ends. We’re good with beginnings, not so good with endings.
Men's Work 