Stability, we all seek it to some degree. Most of us crave it–even our dogs wants meals and walks at the same time every day.

We work so hard to secure a routine and the assurances that we can sleep in the same place every night, that the quest for stability has defined the stages of human life throughout the modern world. School, college, career, marriage, home ownership–these are all various ways in which we try and secure a sense of reliability in our lives, so that we won’t just wander from place to place, job to job, relationship to relationship, without any certainty to lean on.

Even though we might enjoy a break or a change in patterns from time to time, à la a vacation, that enjoyment rests on a foundation of assumptions that our patterns of eating, sleeping, and sheltering are always available and waiting for us when we return.

Stability sounds really nice. But is it real?

Just think about it. What is free from entropy, change, and the pull and push of time?

Life comes with zero guarantees (except death), no matter how hard we try.

In tying success and the good life inextricably to stability, we have set ourselves an impossible expectation, a quest doomed to fail, a life that will find us always thirsty, never quenched.

Does it mean we don’t seek certainty, steadiness, security against the vicissitudes of time? I don’t think we could stop ourselves if we tried.

But we can change our expectations. Become aware of the true nature of life–that it cannot be caged, frozen, captured, threatened, or coaxed into stability.

And with it redefine what counts as a beautiful life–one that is mysterious, unknowable, unstoppable, and loved best when held lightly, always ready to let go.