“One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold onto that vital truism: ‘This too shall pass.'” – Alain de Botton – Author
Age changes the practical meaning of impermanence. In youth, difficult experiences can feel permanent because the future is still largely hypothetical and the past contains fewer comparable episodes. Later life supplies a longer archive of reversals: grief gives way to adaptation, fear loses its sharpness, success fades, and circumstances once regarded as decisive become part of an intelligible sequence. The resulting wisdom is not a denial of pain. It is a more accurate sense of scale, in which intense feelings remain real without being mistaken for permanent facts.
The important word is capacity. Remembering that conditions change is easy when life is calm; holding that knowledge during illness, humiliation, bereavement, financial pressure, or uncertainty is much harder. The discipline involves maintaining two thoughts at once: the present situation deserves attention, and it will not remain exactly as it is. That combination differs from passive optimism. It does not promise that every outcome will improve, nor does it excuse inaction. It creates enough psychological distance to make a response possible rather than allowing the immediate moment to dictate the whole interpretation of life.
The saying itself belongs to a much older tradition than modern self-help. Its precise origin is disputed, but versions of the impermanence story appear in Persian Sufi literature, Jewish folklore, and later English retellings. A well-known nineteenth-century version presents a ruler seeking words that would comfort him in adversity and restrain him in prosperity; the answer is that the current condition will pass.9 The historical uncertainty matters because it prevents a simplistic claim that one culture or author invented the idea. What persists across versions is not a fixed doctrine but a portable mental instrument: prosperity should not produce complacency, and suffering should not be mistaken for eternity.
That balance explains why the principle can become more useful with age. Experience provides evidence against the mind’s tendency to treat the present as uniquely final. A person who has survived earlier transitions can draw on remembered change, not merely abstract reasoning. Yet ageing does not automatically produce this result. Repeated hardship may lead to bitterness, avoidance, or fatalism, while privilege may limit opportunities to develop emotional flexibility. The relevant achievement is therefore not chronological age but improved judgement about time, agency, and proportion.
Impermanence is not indifference
A common objection is that such counsel can sound dismissive. Telling someone that a crisis will pass may imply that the crisis does not require solidarity, justice, treatment, or material assistance. That objection is valid when the principle is used to silence legitimate distress. Temporary suffering can still cause lasting injury, and some conditions demand urgent intervention rather than contemplation. A more responsible interpretation treats impermanence as a reason to act wisely. Because circumstances change, choices made now can influence what follows; because time is limited, postponement also has consequences.
The same logic applies to positive experience. If change is acknowledged only during hardship, the idea becomes a consolation rather than a general account of life. Health, status, admiration, professional success, and relationships are also vulnerable to alteration. Recognising this need not diminish enjoyment. It can make attention more deliberate by loosening the expectation that good conditions must be secured forever before they count. The present becomes valuable precisely because it is finite, not because it can be made permanent.
Psychological research supports a qualified version of this perspective. Studies of older adults associate different orientations towards past, present, and future with different patterns of wellbeing. A positive relationship with the past and an engaged relationship with the present can support satisfaction, whereas a fatalistic present orientation is associated with more depressive symptoms.7 This distinction is crucial. Present-mindedness is not the same as resignation. One form involves noticing what is available and actionable now; the other assumes that effort cannot alter events. The first can strengthen agency, while the second can erode it.
The strategic value of a wider time horizon
In practical terms, the principle works as a form of emotional regulation. When a person labels a state as permanent, the perceived cost of every setback rises and decision-making narrows. Recalling previous transitions can reduce that distortion without pretending to know the precise future. Research on time perspective has identified impermanence focus, present centredness, positive temporal refocusing, and negative temporal contrasting as distinguishable coping strategies, with balanced temporal perspectives associated with aspects of wellbeing.10 These findings do not prove that a single maxim improves health, but they support the broader claim that flexible movement between past, present, and future is psychologically useful.
This flexibility also has strategic importance beyond private wellbeing. Leaders, investors, clinicians, and citizens routinely make decisions under conditions that reward neither panic nor complacency. Treating a temporary downturn as permanent can produce destructive overreaction; treating a temporary advantage as secure can encourage reckless expansion. The disciplined question is not whether change will occur, but which elements are transient, which are structural, and which actions can alter the trajectory. That question turns a moral reminder into a method of analysis.
There is also a social dimension. People often interpret ageing as decline alone, yet later life can bring greater tolerance for ambiguity, a richer memory of recovery, and less dependence on immediate approval. These gains are uneven and can be constrained by poor health, isolation, discrimination, or economic insecurity. A humane view therefore avoids presenting acceptance as an individual obligation. The ability to hold a wider perspective is partly supported by relationships, stable living conditions, healthcare, and communities that allow people to recover rather than merely endure.
The deepest lesson is modest rather than triumphant. No mental formula can remove grief, prevent loss, or guarantee that the next phase will be better. Its value lies in resisting the mind’s demand to turn a passing condition into a complete identity or a final verdict. Maturity, in this sense, is not constant serenity. It is the growing ability to remain responsive to the present while remembering that the present is a moving part of a larger life.
References
1. Best This Too Shall Pass Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings – https://www.quotessence.com/topics/this-too-shall-pass/
2. Alain de Botton Quotes (Author of The Course of Love) (page 3 of 57) – 2025-01-01 – https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/13199.Alain_de_Botton?page=3
3. Frases de Alain de Botton (152 citas) – https://citas.in/autores/alain-de-botton/
4. Alain de Botton: 50 Profound One-Liners on Human Nature – 2023-11-12 – https://www.stoichandbook.co/50-profound-one-liners-from-alain-de-botton-about-human-nature/
5. 50+ Alain de Botton Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us – 2015-10-14 – https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/5926-alain-de-botton
6. 5309085880.pdf – http://tsetv.kz/app/webroot/js/kcfinder/upload/files/5309085880.pdf
7. Desmyter De Raedt PB Time Perspective Elderly – https://backoffice.biblio.ugent.be/download/2109046/6770607
8. Behavioural Pathways to Resilience and Psychological Adaptation in Older Adults: A Conceptual Review » The International Journal of Indian Psych?logy – 2026-06-29 – https://ijip.in/articles/behavioural-pathways/
9. This too shall pass – Wikipedia – 2008-06-16 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass
10. Time will tell: Time perspective as a source for metacognitive emotion-focused coping and its measurement – 2021-01-01 – https://www.academia.edu/92126995/Time_will_tell_Time_perspective_as_a_source_for_metacognitive_emotion_focused_coping_and_its_measurement
11. This Too Shall Pass famous quotes – 2025-04-22 – https://www.inspiringquotes.us/topic/2958-this-too-shall-pass
12. Waking Up To Impermanence – 2025-01-01 – https://thestoicgym.com/the-stoic-magazine/article/349
13. 75 Letting Go Quotes To Help You Live Free – 2019-11-07 – https://wisdomquotes.com/letting-go-quotes/
14. Everything passes (quotes) – Wisdom Trove – 2021-10-01 – https://wisdomtrove.com/everything-passes-quotes/
15. THIS TOO SHALL PASS QUOTES [PAGE – 2] | A-Z Quotes – https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/this-too-shall-pass.html?p=2
