We are at the end of another conventional year. Most of us use this time to look back and see what happened during this year. It is almost like summarizing the events in your memory book. So, if you look back at the year 2015 what do you see? The world has changed. Europe for instance, which was once considered to be one of the safest place on earth has suddenly become not so safe due to terrorist activities. Doha-Qatar, in the desert, has flooded. Our country has changed too. The government changed, ministries changed. May be your neighbourhood has changed too, with new houses or demolitions. If you think of your friends, have they changed? May be you have lost someone you really loved or if you were lucky have only gained more friends. What about your family? May be someone has died and you lost someone or someone married and you gained a new member.

Your home? Does it need a colour wash or any repairs? What about yourself? May be you have changed from single to married, or you have changed from wife to a mother, or from a mother of one to mother of two. May be things were not positive for you; you divorced, lost your partner, lost your child. Or may be your life did not change so vastly but only subtly. However, when you look back you can see one thing very clearly and consistently, that is the ‘change’. Everything around you has changed either towards good or bad, and either enormously or slightly.

What about yourself? Your appearance; you became one year older than in the previous year, and has that brought about any change in your looks? And if you had accidents or operations that probably have changed you.

What about how you feel about things? With new knowledge our feelings towards people and things change constantly. Something that made you so happy suddenly becomes something that makes you sad and vice versa.

How you recognize things and your perceptions change all the time. Sometimes within a course of hours or minutes your views change, based on what you see, hear, taste, feel or think. And oh..please! let us not talk about our mind…change is all that it knows…sometimes it changes so fast that we find it hard to keep up with it. “I used to hate that guy/girl, and have no idea when all that changed” sounds familiar?

All in all, change is what we see when we look back, or when we look into ourselves. It is a gradual process that keeps happening all the time. The supreme Buddha explained this as anicca – impermanence. And whatever is impermenant is subjected to dukkha – suffering; stress. And whatever is impermanent and causes suffering is anatta – not me, mine or myself.

By Prajapathi Jayawardene