The Comfort of Temporary

Most people survive their lives by calling things temporary.

The exhaustion is temporary.
The confusion is temporary.
The dissatisfaction is temporary.

Temporary sounds reasonable.
Measured.
Adult.

It sounds like patience.
Like resilience.
Like someone who understands that life comes in phases.

But temporary is not only a description of reality.

It is a psychological tool.

Temporary is how you stay without admitting that you are staying. It is how you endure without deciding. How you tolerate without consenting.

Temporary is a permission slip.

It tells you that nothing has to be addressed yet.
That nothing has to be confronted yet.
That nothing has to change yet.

It gives you the sense that you are responsible
without forcing you to be honest.

Temporary turns avoidance into patience.

As long as something is framed as temporary, it does not demand anything from you.

It does not require a difficult conversation.
It does not ask you to disappoint anyone.
It does not threaten the image you have of yourself.

Temporary allows everything to remain intact.

You can endure almost anything
if you believe it will end on its own.

Eventually.

And that word does more damage than people realize.

Eventually suggests that time itself will take responsibility for your life.

That clarity will arrive passively.
That change will happen without confrontation.

Eventually allows you to borrow comfort from a future that does not exist.

It lets you postpone the moment where you have to admit that nothing is actually moving.

But eventually might never arrive.

Not because you failed.
Not because you missed your chance.
Not because you were lazy or weak.

But because most things do not end unless they are ended.

They do not collapse.
They do not resolve themselves.
They stabilize.

They settle into routines.
Into habits.
Into something you learn to live with.

What starts as tolerable becomes familiar.
What is familiar becomes justified.
What is justified becomes invisible.

Temporary is how people slowly acclimate
to lives they would never choose directly.

Lives that feel slightly off, but never dramatic enough to demand rupture.
Lives that are uncomfortable, but not intolerable.
Lives that are survivable.

Temporary is how people explain to themselves
why they are still there.

Ask yourself this if you want to break the pattern: