Permanency

I heard a few times people quote the phrase “the only constant is Change”, and in those times, those words came into my deaf ear. It’s something as adult we all see and know, isn’t it?

Just yesterday, I listened to a technology presentation on the “new” paradigm of software development. The name itself indicates that developing a software these days is a continuous development, or seems to me like a never ending job. But is this really “new”, as if the old days when people develop software, it stays there forever?

And I remember my own painful experience, when I built a system and witness it being replaced less than 5 years.

Recently, I pick up with a heavy heart, book of Ecclesiastes to meditate upon. I don’t really like this book because it has that “down / depressed” tone in it. Nevertheless, I thought it’s a proper book to meditate upon during this COVID-19 season.

And to unpack that statement that everything is meaningless, we’ve to read what he wrote next, why he concluded that everything is meaningless.

Just to share what I understood from my short meditation on this: everything is meaningless because there is no permanency on this earth. Whatever things we do or will do, would not last. At one point, they all be gone or be forgotten. As painful as when we’re told that our job is redundant, or my piece of software out of my hard labor (which I am proud of) is no longer relevant, or even our children didn’t follow our path of life / instructions; having no permanency leads to meaninglessness.

In that sense, I thank God for the wisdom He gave to the Teacher. That he is teaching us the truth that there is nothing permanent here on earth. Whatever things we build or do, they are all just temporary. Things we thought are permanent, actually they’re not. It is wisdom to see reality and not illusion. I thank God who used the painful experience, even after so many years, to show me that all things here is temporary, so that I might look to something better. For something that is permanent, out of this world.

What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun. ~Ecc 1:9 (NIV)