On Impermanence

Most of my life, I struggled with the concept of impermanence.

I have a vivid memory of the disappearnace of Jell-O Pudding Pops and the angst it caused me. I can't recall when I first ate one, probably when Cosby was hawking them in the 1980s. I do remember buying them often while grocery shopping with my then-wife in our mid-twenties. Yet one day (the best the Internet can tell me was "during the 1990s"), they were simply gone from the freezer aisle, and I haven't tasted one in likely 30 years.

I remember being irritated by the unceremonious discontinuation, and maybe even a little hurt by it. How could something that had been there for so long (a few decades) just disappear overnight? How is that fair to the world? And, importantly, how is that fair to *me*?

As a child, I consumed media. I watched the same television shows every week, with the same actors playing the same characters. In retrospect, that stability was obviously important to me on some fundamental level. Those shows, those actors, those characters had always been there. Logically, they always would be. I believed the same about other media, like popular music. I knew the players on the board, and that sense of knowing felt good.

Then one day, I took note of some new face in popular culture. I cannot even recall who it was—likely a television actor or musician. However, I do remember thinking (or perhaps even saying), "Who the hell is that, and why do they think we should care who they are?"

The audacity. This person believed we should take notice of them. They wanted to be *famous* when they had done basically nothing—there's no track record that demonstrates they are noteworthy. Why should we give a shit about this newbie when we already have John Ritter and Jaclyn Smith and Blondie? Why in the world would we need new names and faces? What's wrong with what we already have? For God's sake, what is to become of our (my) stable world-view?

I don't know with certainty if anyone else has had these thoughts. I've never discussed it with anyone. I suspect most of us experience something at least a bit like it at some point in our lives.

I do know absolutely that it felt as though the sands were shifting underfoot when I saw that new actor/musician/whatever on TV, and that I experienced a profound sense of loss when Jell-O Pudding Pops were pulled from the market without my consent. Stability was gone, and the universe was no longer as I had come to understand it.

History was supposed to be history. Anything that came before my consciousness, be it Ancient Rome or Beethoven or the Korean War, was "a very long time ago." Then one day, the entire universe gets flipped on its head. You are listening to NPR and you realize that Ruby Bridges integrated public schools in New Orleans just a few years before you were born. Oh, and by the way 50+ year old, did you realize the Civil War was less than 40 years before your grandfather was conceived? Or that he was a teenager before anyone in his neighborhood owned an automobile? Maybe "a very long time ago" wasn't so long ago after all.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I had many different friend groups in college. I endeavored to keep them separate. When a close friend in one circle met a close friend from another, I was wary. When one of those friends set the other up with an acquaintence, I berated the matchmaker. This was going to cause nothing but trouble for all of us. "Worlds were colliding," as George Costanza informed us just a few years later. And when that relationship fell apart (very badly) a few months later, we were expected to choose sides. Stability was obliterated. I detested everything about it.

All of this change is natural, of course—inevitable, even. The universe is nothing if not chaotic, and perhaps just as critically, our society commoditizes absolutely everything. Most every physical object is designed to be purchased, wear out as quickly as possible, be discarded and replaced. The same rules apply for our art and culture: the "hot new thing" generates revenue, and new money is all our system *really* cares about. Celebrities are not exempt. The system ingests the young and beautiful (and occasionally talented), chews them up in short order, and spits them out.

I am quite accepting of all this in my Old Age™. But I rejected it in my youth, and now wonder what that means vis-a-vis the realities I've made myself to suffer. Does a fundamental fear of change explain my intentional rejection of forming new friendships in graduate school, my avoidant personality, and my steadfast commitment to a 15+ year run at bachelorhood?

If so, what's the true cause? What led to this deep-seated desire for consistency and the anxiety that was caused by something as simple as the loss of a dessert option?

Anyway, Merry Christmas, everyone.