We encounter truth in countless ways. Ordinary moments reveal it. Familiar conversations uncover it. At times, truth arrives gently, almost unnoticed, and touches us before we understand what has happened. At other times, truth crashes into us. It dismantles assumptions we scarcely knew we held. Whether truth whispers through reflection or strikes through disruption, it wakes us.
One afternoon, I sat in a parkette surrounded by high-end boutique stores and high-rise residences. Over coffee, I noticed a woman in a burgundy sundress. She stood near a cement pillar and took photos and videos of an elaborate Inuksuk, a balanced pile of stones she had arranged with obvious care. She spoke and laughed loudly to herself. She twirled and danced around the structure. She admired it from different angles. Her joy filled the space around her as she mimicked a photoshoot with a live model.
Pedestrians were concerned about her “odd” behaviour. A mother took her child’s hand and drew her close to her side as they passed, giving her a wide berth. Some crossed to the other side of the street to avoid her. “She seemed unaware of the verdicts being quietly rendered by the passing jury of strangers.” Her attention belonged entirely to her masterpiece. I envied her indifference to others’ reactions. For most of my life, I sought external validation and became proficient in the cowardice of pleasing others.
The Inuksuk did not first draw me in. She did. Her well-kept appearance, burgundy sundress, and new large iPhone stood in sharp contrast to her behaviour. I watched her because I could not easily place her in any category. I admired her freedom. She seemed unfazed by the judgment of strangers, while I had spent much of my life crippled by it. Paying the cost of cowardice
Her whole being radiated content self-absorption and joyous energy. She had made something, and for that brief stretch of time, she celebrated it without apology.
Then she moved toward the Inuksuk.
For a moment, I assumed she wanted one more photograph. Instead, she began to dismantle it. Her movements were deliberate. One stone fell. Then another. Then another. Within seconds, the structure she had praised, photographed, and danced around lay scattered at the base of the pillar.
Her actions startled me. They also exposed me.
I realized how tightly I cling to what cannot last. I cling to achievements, as though success can outrun time. I cling to possessions, as though ownership can make anything permanent. I cling to identity, reputation, plans, and even the people and animals I love most, as though love can spare them from loss. Yet everything earthly stands under the same sentence: temporary.
The woman seemed to understand what I often resist. The stones mattered, but they were not eternal. The process mattered, but it was not permanent. The joy mattered, even though the structure would not survive the afternoon. She built it. She celebrated it. She released it.
That sequence felt almost sacred.
Life must be framed by this awareness of impermanence. Without it, we become spectators. We wait for perfect conditions. We postpone affection. We protect ourselves from disappointment by withholding our full presence. We move through life half-awake, trying to preserve what was never ours to keep.
Impermanence changes that. It urges us to love with more passion, not less. It teaches us to enter our work with greater devotion rather than detachment. It asks us to honour the people we meet, the projects we touch, and the moments entrusted to us because each one will pass.
The magic is not that anything lasts forever. The magic is that temporary things can still carry eternal weight.
For me, that truth points toward God. Achievements fade. Possessions break. Bodies weaken. Pets die. Loved ones leave this earth. Even our proudest creations eventually fall stone by stone. What endures is faith in the love of an eternal God and the legacy of relationships we cultivate while we are here.
The woman’s Inuksuk did not last. It was never meant to last. Yet because she created it with joy, honoured it with attention, and released it with freedom, it became more than a pile of stones. It became a sermon without words.
As I left the park that afternoon, I realized that the lesson was never about a pile of stones. It was about the paradox that lies at the heart of the human experience. We spend our lives trying to preserve what time inevitably takes away, believing permanence gives things value. Yet perhaps their value lies precisely in their impermanence.
Perhaps the greatest paradox of impermanence is this: what does not last often deserves our deepest attention. The awareness that our days, our relationships, and our accomplishments are temporary should not diminish our love for life; it should deepen it. Knowing that nothing in this world lasts forever ought to make us more passionate in our living, more intentional in our loving, and less willing to let familiarity blind us to the preciousness of what we have. Gratitude flourishes when we remember that every moment is a gift, not a guarantee. When we cease taking life for granted, we begin to cherish it more fully.
In love,
Finney