Change is constant. Nothing, absolutely nothing, lasts forever. This is something I have really become familiar with in this life, and yet, every time something ends, I am struck – yet again! – with surprise and grief and wondering. How could I have made it last?  What failure on my part led to this end? Or, worse, WHO is to blame for this? Blaming others simply leads me to feel like I am a helpless victim to circumstance, and blaming myself, well, this hardens my ego into the belief that somehow I actually have control over this immutable fact of life: things change. The Buddha taught that there are three marks of all existence – annica, dukkha, and annata. Anatta, or “no self”, can also be understood as “no separate self”. Thich Nhat Hanh used to say we “inter-are”, and call it “interbeing”. There is no solid and unchanging “me”, rather, the “me” I know is more like a river. We understand that there is a river, it is a concept we can use to understand and communicate the concept, but the river, like ourselves, is constantly changing. Placing a hand in the river at this moment will touch an entirely different collection of parts from those we may have touched a few minutes [...]