What Does Permanence Mean?

One day, this will all be over.

My life. Yours.
The couch I’m sitting on.
The devices we cling to.
The buildings we built.
The thoughts we didn’t say out loud.
The ones we did.

Gone.

The couch will get sold, maybe. Moved to a different city, different hands.
Labeled vintage.
Then dated.
Then junk.

Eventually, it’ll break down. Torn to pieces.
Hauled to a landfill.
Buried.
Eaten by the soil.
Its memory reduced to a sliver of steel and a scent that means nothing to anyone but worms.

And long after that?
The sun will expand.
The oceans will boil.
The crust will fracture.
Civilization—your name, your dog, your dreams—burnt into nothing but ash and carbon smoke.
Then the sun will die.
And the galaxy.
And the universe.
All of it drifting, dead and dark.

Entropy wins.
Everything ends.
That’s the deal.

So why the fuck do we care about anything?

Why go to therapy?
Why try to fall in love again?
Why train for a race or make your bed or get sober or learn how to cook or call your estranged father?

Why not just lay down and let the heat death swallow us early?

Here’s why:

Because in the moment, it’s everything.

Because we’re cursed with consciousness and blessed with it, too.
Because we know the clock is ticking and still choose to dance anyway.

Because the moment is the only permanence we get.
Not forever.
Not always.
Just now.

The run you take on a shitty Monday morning? That is permanence.
The kiss you give when you’re still mad but trying anyway? That’s permanence.
The way your mom laughed when she couldn’t finish a joke because she was crying too hard?
That’s fucking permanence.

Not because it lasts forever.
But because it happened.

Because it was real.
And you felt it.

And the moments we feel become the only things we ever really own.

So, no.
Permanence isn’t about forever.

It’s about now.
As long as we’re still here.
As long as we’re still breathing.

Everything ends.
But you haven’t yet.

So go make something permanent.

Before the stars forget we were ever here.