{"id":651,"date":"2009-06-14T16:11:13","date_gmt":"2009-06-14T16:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/06\/a-lesson-in-impermanence.html"},"modified":"2009-06-14T16:11:13","modified_gmt":"2009-06-14T16:11:13","slug":"a-lesson-in-impermanence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/06\/a-lesson-in-impermanence.html","title":{"rendered":"A Lesson in Impermanence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past week I had the unfortunate experience of having my wallet stolen. All I know is that I had it and two blocks and one stop at a shoe store later, it was gone. As soon as I realized it was missing, my friend and I raced back to the shoe store, but no wallet. What&#8217;s ironic is that I was listening to a podcast on mindfulness before I left the house.<\/p>\n<p>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-center\" height=\"300\" alt=\"pickpocket.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/124\/import\/pickpocket.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>(image courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/matiasjajaja\/280000443\/\">matiasjajaja<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My initial reaction was a sort of panic and then annoyance that a) someone apparently took my wallet and b) the relaxing day I had been enjoying with my friend felt ruined. She accompanied me to two banks as I cancelled my cards, loaned me&nbsp;some&nbsp;cash and bought us Thai food. As I was sitting there still feeling angry she said, &#8220;Well, at least it&#8217;s all replaceable.&#8221; I thought about that simple statement for a moment and couldn&#8217;t disagree. I told her she was right and then decided to just accept it and move on.<\/p>\n<p>So, this experience&nbsp;actually ended up being a good, though somewhat inconvenient, lesson in impermanence. It was also a reminder that while we can&#8217;t control the actions of others, we do have responsibility for our own&nbsp;reactions&#8230;and that&#8217;s pretty empowering.&nbsp;Sitting around pouting about something I can&#8217;t change&nbsp;is a choice- it&#8217;s me deciding to ruin my own day by playing the blame game. Though accepting and letting go still might&nbsp;not always be&nbsp;my innate response, I&#8217;m practicing being able to get there a little quicker, and that&nbsp;constitutes some progress.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past week I had the unfortunate experience of having my wallet stolen. All I know is that I had it and two blocks and one stop at a shoe store later, it was gone. As soon as I realized it was missing, my friend and I raced back to the shoe store, but no&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everybody-hurts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Lesson in Impermanence - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/06\/a-lesson-in-impermanence.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Lesson in Impermanence - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This past week I had the unfortunate experience of having my wallet stolen. All I know is that I had it and two blocks and one stop at a shoe store later, it was gone. As soon as I realized it was missing, my friend and I raced back to the shoe store, but no&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/06\/a-lesson-in-impermanence.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-14T16:11:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/pickpocket.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Denise M. Abatemarco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Lesson in Impermanence - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/06\/a-lesson-in-impermanence.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Lesson in Impermanence - One City","og_description":"This past week I had the unfortunate experience of having my wallet stolen. All I know is that I had it and two blocks and one stop at a shoe store later, it was gone. As soon as I realized it was missing, my friend and I raced back to the shoe store, but no&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/06\/a-lesson-in-impermanence.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-06-14T16:11:13+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/files\/import\/pickpocket.jpg"}],"author":"Denise M. 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Abatemarco","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f3b\/f3b5a24aa55fd736473295ad910130d1x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f3b\/f3b5a24aa55fd736473295ad910130d1x96.jpg","caption":"Denise M. Abatemarco"},"description":"Denise has a bachelor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Communications and Psychology from The College of New Rochelle and a master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Humanities and Social Thought from The Draper Program at NYU. She is currently pursuing a second master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in mental health counseling from Brooklyn College and hopes to one day have her own private practice. Her primary interests include gender and queer theory, the intersections of psychoanalysis and Buddhism and the psychology of intimacy. Denise began meditating and studying Buddhism in 2005 and shortly thereafter discovered the ID Project where she has been practicing ever since.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/dabatemarco"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}