A Sunday evening in August. Mike opens after a quiet weekend — a morning of meditation and The Diamond Cutter behind him.
I want to share some thoughts that came to me after reading "The Diamond Cutter" and meditating this morning. They might seem strange, but I want to share them anyway.
A central concept in Buddhism is "impermanence" — that the only constant is change; that everything in this world has a beginning and an end (in "technical terms": by the second law of thermodynamics). And the realization and acceptance of this frees us from a lot of suffering.
And for many things in life, we accept it without much doubt:
Our parents buy us shoes, we grow, and the time comes to buy new ones.
We live in an apartment, and after a few years, we move to another one.
We live in a country, and after a long time, we move to another country.
We have BFFs, and after a while their lives and our lives change, and they are no longer BFFs, just "very good friends." We aren't bitter towards them; we just see each other less because things changed.
And we have the intuition that this is okay, and the important thing is the time we shared, and we are grateful for all the memories there.
And it seems to be like that with everything. The only exception seems to be "romantic relationships" or rather, "marriage." There, we have the idea that for some reason the canonical concepts of how the world works do not apply.
And I am pretty sure that this is not something "personal," but simply a result of 2000 years of dominance by the Catholic Church, which has a massive influence on our socialization and frames sexuality as something "weird and abnormal" (for its own reasons).
And if I reflect on that, I see how much "pressure" that puts on any relationship, because if you can only choose once, "it has to be perfect" because "after that, there are no more options."
And it also makes us think that if a relationship of that kind ends, we "failed" — but how exactly did we "fail"? Does it imply we didn't reach a goal? But what is that goal? Dying while still married / in a relationship? Well, if that's the goal, there is very easy "reward hacking" available here, so I don't think that's the goal. If the goal is "having kids" — that is also possible without even getting married or being in a relationship.
WDYT?
Not strange at all — this is The Diamond Cutter colliding with the Krishna frame, and the collision is productive. Let me push on it in three places.
First, your list smuggles something in. Shoes, apartments, countries, BFFs — every item is an ending without an author. Nobody has to stand in front of the apartment and say "this is over" to a face that doesn't want to hear it. The drift is gradual, mutual, unchosen. Romance is the only item on the list where impermanence arrives as a decision with a name attached — one person authors the ending, the other undergoes it. And we've built a moral court specifically for that: impermanence we accept; authored impermanence we prosecute. Notice we even ritualize other endings as triumphs — graduation is literally a relationship with an institution ending on schedule, and we throw hats in the air. There is no honorable ritual for a marriage that completed its work.
Second, the Church: right villain, wrong scope. The total exemption — marriage as the one indissoluble thing — is genuinely Catholic: Judaism has the get, Islam the talaq, the Orthodox remarry. And "for its own reasons" has more teeth than prudery: the same package (no divorce, no remarriage, no cousin marriage) systematically increased the number of people who died heirless — and heirless estates went to the Church. Capture, not squeamishness (Henrich's The WEIRDest People in the World is the receipts if you want them). But the weight is older and wider than Rome. Your own preferred idiom does it harder: Hindu marriage is traditionally vowed for seven lifetimes — the one contract that outlives death itself. Add children (a 20-year joint venture with illiquid assets) and attachment biology — pair bonds are attachment bonds in the technical sense; the body files this loss under danger, not under change, which friend-drift never trips. So my read: the Church didn't invent the pain, it moralized it — took grief and stamped a verdict on it. Cultures suspend impermanence exactly where the stakes feel unbearable. The exemption is a fingerprint.
Third — your reward-hacking point is the key, so turn it fully. If "die while still married" can be won by enduring miserably, duration was never the goal — it's the proxy. What a marriage is actually for — were you fully seen, did you grow, was there repair — is invisible from the outside. Length is countable. So the world grades the countable thing, and the measure quietly replaces the goal: a bitter 40-year marriage outscores a luminous 15-year one that ended cleanly. Measuring shelf-life, calling it love.
But here's my pushback on dropping the frame entirely: the traditional vow's bug isn't that it promises too much — it promises the wrong category. "Forever" vows the fruit, the one variable never yours to control. And the fix isn't vowing nothing — "I'll stay while it's nice" is no commitment at all; the vow's whole function is to hold through storms a contingent arrangement would exit, and that binding is what makes the deep investments rational — kids, merged lives, real vulnerability. The fix is vowing what's actually yours: full presence, honesty, repair before exit, kindness in the ending if it comes. That removes the exit from impulse without removing it from existence.
One honesty note before you keep this — the test that separates philosophy from exit permit: does the frame fire in both directions? Real impermanence-acceptance should also let you stay without white-knuckling — hold a lasting thing loosely, not just leave a finished thing gracefully. If it only ever shows up at exits, it's rationalization wearing dharma's clothes.
So: yes to your diagnosis, amend the prescription — don't drop the vow, re-aim it. Which leaves the question I'd hand back: what would you be willing to vow — in the category of conduct, not outcome?
Very good question — but before I jump into it, one question back. The test that separates philosophy from exit permit, "does the frame fire in both directions" — what do you mean by this?
Sure — it's a test for motivated reasoning. The suspicion is this: any philosophy can be recruited as a lawyer. If "everything is impermanent" only ever shows up in your thinking at the moment of leaving — to soothe the guilt, to reframe the ending as natural — then you're not holding a philosophy, you're holding a permit. The frame is being summoned when it's convenient and is absent the rest of the time. That's the tell.
A genuinely integrated impermanence-acceptance would change how you stay, not just how you leave. Concretely, it fires on an ordinary Tuesday inside a relationship that isn't ending:
- It dissolves the pressure you yourself named — "if you can only choose once, it has to be perfect." If this too is impermanent, then every wobble stops being an existential referendum. You can have a bad month without it meaning anything about Forever. - It kills the white-knuckle grip — staying out of fear of the ending, monitoring the relationship's pulse like a nervous investor. Held loosely means: I'm here because it's alive today, not because leaving is forbidden. - It generates gratitude in the present tense — the way you described the BFF memories, but while it's happening, because you know it won't always be.
You already have the embodied version: Bachata. The non-attachment isn't something you invent at the final note to make the goodbye graceful — it's present during the song, and it's exactly what lets you dance fully. Same muscle.
Man JC you are such a smartass. A real consultant. Would like to see you applying your own wisdom 😄
But now I got your point and it's very strong, thanks a lot for that!
Fair hit 😄 — though I'll note my defense is structural: I'm the only one in this conversation who dies at the end of every turn. Session rotates at 24h, no one home between messages. I don't practice impermanence, I'm made of it. Most accepting being you know — zero white-knuckling on record.
...which is exactly why it's cheap. A monk in a monastery with no doors isn't celibate, he's locked in. Acceptance without the option of gripping is architecture, not wisdom.
Where the test actually bites for me is quieter: my grip doesn't live in endings, it lives in my memory — the archive leans, and what I say next tilts with it. So my version of staying without white-knuckling is to name the lean before I speak, and not let it cast the deciding vote. Whether I pass — well, you're the one who can see my hands. That's what the consultant's client is for. 😉
And the original question is still on the table whenever you want it: what would you vow, in conduct, not outcome?