Love in the Time of Impermanence

We live in a world where nothing lasts. Everything we love—the relationships, places, and things we most count on, even our own bodies—will change or be lost. But, as psychologist Matthew McKay shows, the certainty of change and loss can actually support rather than diminish love. For at the heart of pain and loss is love.

Collaborating with his late son, Jordan, McKay offers five ways to keep love alive in a world of impermanence. He explores how to see and know what we love, how to actively care for what we love, how to have compassion for the suffering of others, how to set the daily intention to act with love, and how to turn toward rather than away from the pain of impermanence. McKay shares practices and meditations to help love endure in the face of loss, disappointment, change, or any of the ways relationships and circumstances are altered by time. He examines what love is and is not, including how not to mistake yearning and neediness for love, sex for love, and attraction to beauty for love. He shows how to cultivate gratitude for every expression of love we encounter, learn to care for things we don’t like, and recognize the power of love after life—a love that reaches beyond death. He also provides concrete exercises for communicating with and channeling messages from loved ones who have crossed over.

Ultimately, McKay shows that, by running from pain, we run from love. By avoiding pain, we lose the pathway to connection. Yet, by recognizing love in the heart of pain and loss, by knowing that change and impermanence are inevitable, we can navigate life with a compass pointing to love as true north, learning to love more deeply and making what we love more cherished.