In Roman Catholic tradition, believers mark the beginning of the season of Lent with a day called “Ash Wednesday.” On this day, a priest marks your forehead with a cross of ashes, declaring, “Remember you come from dust and unto dust you shall return.”

Morbid stuff, huh.

Or is it a necessary reminder of our transitory time on earth?

As the days of 2016 pass, I am consistently struck with the painful reality that my time in college is going to end. My time with my closest friends will end. I will complete my undergraduate education and pounce into the “real, adult world.” I will stress over my first mortgage, I will get screened for breast cancer, I will get too wrapped up in my career to focus on settling down. I will jolt awake at 2:00 a.m. to find myself suddenly forty-three years old. I will probably fail many, many times before this.

You see, the recent death of a friend shattered my image of the world. It forced me to confront existential questions I was too terrified to answer. If a young man with so much fire blazing in his heart could be extinguished, what is the fate of those of us who have only a flicker? Witnessing a community recover from such a blow has brought me to a cruel, yet calming clarity.

Nothing Gold Can Stay.

When I received flowers on my birthday, their beauty immediately captivated me. I put them in a vase with water and that weird plant juice so they could last a little longer. As the days passed their color faded, the once waxy leaves dulled, and petals silently dropped one by one. After a week I had to throw them away. When I accepted the bouquet, the allure stemmed from its impermanence. I knew the flowers were not going to last forever, but I enjoyed the beauty while it lasted.

The beauty of an object lies in its fleeting nature.

How tightly do we cling to cool autumn afternoons when we see winter’s biting frost menacing? How much do we cling to childhood when we see a cutthroat, adult world looming in the near future? We don’t want things to change. We don’t want life to not be in our favor.

If we could instead accept life’s impermanence we could cease so much self-inflicted suffering. We let emotions like frustration and fear dominate our decisions because our minds dwell in the past or future, rather than the remarkable now. By letting “It was” and “It will be” conquer “it is,” we attempt to immortalize ourselves. With a “nothing but time on our hands” mentality, we become complacent yet impatient.

The present is dazzling and fierce in its beauty and brevity. We are left with one choice: embrace how precious this moment is and then release it. Let it go. Life is painful, fragile, fleeting and inconceivably beautiful.