Each of us has a reckoning with illusions of permanence. Things come and go from our lives with regularity. This is most obvious when we live in a place that faces a building boom. The field down the street or the woods that line the road are leveled for a development. The old farmhouse and barn are torn down and a building pops up in its place. The quiet country road is now lined with cars commuting through, and soon the road is widened and strung with traffic lights. And we mourn what was lost.

It’s similar when a friend we’ve bonded with becomes radically different from us politically. What we believed to be forever turned out to be nothing but an illusion of permanence. The person I thought you were is not who you turned out to be, and you think the same of me. Yet, like that field and stand of trees on that quiet country road, we each have memories of what one was. We each miss the person we thought the other was.

A plot of land might be viewed as an investment in the future of the community, but some folks feel that investment is conservation land and some think it’s a new hospital, grocery store and housing development. Both have value for a community to thrive, and both ought to be fought for. But we ought to consider carefully what will be forever lost when completing the transaction to make the change.

Some relationships are better as transactional. We can put aside our differences and work side-by-side with a teammate or a coworker, focused on the common goal. And we can nurture a deep bond built on common beliefs and a feeling that each person in the relationship is integral to the other. Consider the circle of trust and who we might want within it, and who should remain outside. Often it comes down to who will grow with us and who will erode the essence of who we are for want of some company. We should beware the company we keep, but when the right company is found invest deeply in keeping it.

The thing is, nothing is permanent, but some things have staying power. Everything will disappear one day, but we have agency in keeping that stand of trees or that person we care about in our lives. Or we can use that agency to drift away to do other things that feel important to us, expecting that what we remembered will still be there for us when we return. When we see the fragility of everything on our journey, we begin to prioritize the things that have staying power simply because we take the time to make them so. Ultimately, our legacy is built on what we took the time to care for beyond ourselves.