Gwyne Winnah B.

Magbanua SocSci 12A - HUMSS

September 5, 2019 Philosophy in Life

Change is Permanent

I’ve never really thought about what my main principle or philosophy on life is. I guess,
maybe it’s because I don’t feel like I have the need to follow one rule in my life that I made for
myself. I mean, it’s hard enough for me to follow, support, or defend principles, beliefs, or
philosophies that were taught to me, how could I do those to one that I taught myself? Sticking to
one thing for the rest of my life, or at least a period of my life, is hard for me, because how I view
things, people, and situations in the world constantly changes. The world is constantly changing,
it couldn’t be what it is now without change. It didn’t become what it is now just because of one
philosophy of a single person, it evolved, grew, and progressed because of the philosophies of
many. The same applies to people; I don’t think that there’s only one single philosophy that they
have to stick to for the rest of their lives, or even for just a period of their life, because they can’t
possibly grow, progress, or be better with only one philosophy. People need change to become
better. So, I guess that’s it? I can’t really definitely say, but maybe that is, or that is one of my
philosophies in life: the world and everything within it constantly changes, and nothing can remain
permanent.

I came across this thought or this kind of thinking a few months ago after reading an online
book. The book made me ask myself, how can we have something permanent if change is constant?
The typical me posted this question on an anonymous twitter account that I had. A few minutes
later, I had a response from someone through a private message. This person basically said that
permanency is a paradox. I actually cannot completely understand what he said, but after reading
it over 5 times, I came up with that. Permanency is not actually real because change is constant,
and it is a paradox, because although there is no such thing as permanency, the mere fact that
change is constant makes it permanent. So, nothing is permanent because everything is constantly
changing, but since change is constant it is permanent. I don’t know if that can be understood, but
yeah, that’s why it’s kind of a paradox; because the main reason why nothing can be permanent is
also the one thing that is actually permanent.
 It’s kind of complicated to put into words, but I will try to. Everything is constantly
changing in this world, that is because change is permanent (at least it is how I perceive change to
be); and since change is permanent, nothing really is actually permanent, but that doesn’t mean
that everything is temporary. We all live differently, we all age, grow, and progress in our own
emotional, mental, physical, or physiological ways, we all change, but that doesn’t mean that
everything in our life is temporary. We only perceive things that have changed to be temporary,
because we are limited by time. What may be temporary to us, could be permanent to others basing
on the context of time. We could outlive something, and we could perceive it as temporary; or we
could fall short, and perceive that to be permanent.

Change could happen before we are born or after we are dead, and we only perceive
something to be permanent because we are not alive to see what it has or have changed to. Change
could happen right before our eyes without us seeing that change, because it could be not the
change that we expect. It’s really all just a matter of perspective; but for me, one thing is for sure,
nothing but change is permanent, because it is constant.