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ALL THINGS MUST PASS



Everybody has a favorite Beatle. At least I assume they do.

I always wished I looked like Paul. Actually, depending on the lighting, I still think there’s a chance. Yeah right…

I would have happily taken John’s wit and charm, and if I could have been as funny as Ringo, I’d have accepted that too.

But I was always most drawn to George.

The quiet one.

The one who seemed less interested in being the loudest person in the room and more interested in figuring out what the room meant.

George kept reaching for something deeper. God. Meaning. What lasts and what doesn’t. The whole strange business of being alive.

And I keep coming back to one of his songs.


“All Things Must Pass.”


It has been my favorite for years, though I’m not sure I ever really understood it.

I thought I did, which is something I have discovered I think about many things right before life explains them to me more aggressively.


All things must pass.


Of course they do. Summers end. Kids grow. Dogs get old. Hairlines retreat without telling me.

I used to hear the song as being about losing the good things.

The beautiful day ends. The people we love get older. The moment we want to freeze refuses to cooperate.

But I missed half the song. The bad things pass too. That matters.

Because when you are hurting, really hurting, your brain becomes remarkably confident that you will feel exactly like this forever.

Grief says forever. Shame says forever. Fear starts forwarding its mail.

A terrible season can convince you that it has purchased the building and changed the locks.

It hasn’t.

Harrison sings, “Sunrise doesn’t last all morning.”

I used to hear the sadness in that.

Now I hear the mercy. The sunrise goes. So does the storm. Neither gets permanent residency.

And then there is the line I keep coming back to:

“It’s not always going to be this gray.”

That one hits differently now.

Because sometimes life really is gray. Just heavy. Flat. Hard to see beyond.

And when you are standing in it, gray can feel permanent.

It isn’t.

Some things take much longer than we want. Much longer. I would personally appreciate a little more urgency from daylight.

But it comes.

The thing that wakes you at three in the morning eventually stops waking you every night.

The thought you cannot get out of your head begins visiting less often.

The pain that fills the entire room slowly takes up one corner.

Then one day you laugh and, for a few seconds, forget you were supposed to be miserable.

That is how it happens sometimes… you just notice you can breathe again.

And then there is the other side of the song. The beautiful things pass too. The ordinary afternoon. The voice in the next room. The day you barely notice because nothing remarkable happened.

Those move too.


“All things must pass away.”


I used to think that was a sad line. Now I think it might be one of the most comforting things anyone ever wrote.

Because if you are sitting in the dark right now, the song is telling you something. This is not forever…

And if life is beautiful right now, it is telling you something too.

You don’t have to make the darkness leave and don’t have to make the beautiful thing stay.

Neither was ever yours to control. The thing you are begging God to take away will pass. So will the thing you are begging Him not to.

Maybe that is why I keep coming back to George. The quiet one.

For years I thought he was singing about endings.

I think he was singing about hope. It’s not always going to be this gray.

Nothing gets forever. Not even the dark. ❤️

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