We move forward, endlessly forward, on a treadmill of our own making. It hums beneath us, reassuring in its constancy, its refusal to let us linger or look back. There is always another step, another rung, another something waiting to be earned or achieved. The path isn’t meant to end; its momentum is its purpose. Behind it all, though, something watches. We feel it sometimes—a flicker of unease, a shadow at the edge of our thoughts—but we keep moving. There’s comfort in the motion, in the belief that forward is always the right direction.
Each achievement feels like proof that we are getting somewhere. A promotion that justifies the long hours. A house that declares we’ve arrived. A vacation, meticulously planned and captured in curated snapshots, that says: Look, I am living well. These moments glimmer, tangible and satisfying. They are evidence of our progress, of our ability to build something lasting in a world of constant change. They tell us we are winning.
But even as we expand, something else is contracting. A favorite tree on the street where you grew up, now felled for a wider road. The soft edges of a memory blurred by years of striving. The quiet absence of a friend who once shared your table but slipped away, unnoticed, in the rush of it all. Progress moves forward, but it leaves holes behind, gaps we rarely let ourselves feel.
We nod at the inevitability of change. Nothing stays the same, we say, as if accepting this truth makes us wise. But what we mean is that growth is inevitable. Expansion. Accumulation. We focus on what is gained and ignore what is lost. Loss is uncomfortable. Loss reminds us that permanence is an illusion, that the things we name and claim are slipping through our fingers even as we hold them.
The Chinese have a saying: all life happens in the jaws of the tiger. It’s a startling image, this tiger with its golden teeth, its patient, unblinking stare. Everything we do, every moment we cherish, takes place within its jaws. We know it is there, but we avert our eyes, convincing ourselves that it waits somewhere further down the road. The tiger, though, does not wait. It is here, now, framing the entirety of our existence.
Hindu philosophy calls this maya, the great illusion. We are born into a world of change and impermanence, yet we convince ourselves that what we build will last. We name things, as if fixing them in language could fix them in time. We pave over forests, dam rivers, and strip the land bare, believing we are creating permanence. But the tiger watches, unblinking, knowing better.
Our quest for permanence reaches beyond ourselves, shaping the world in our image. We consume endlessly, drawing from the earth without thought of what is left behind. The forest becomes timber, the soil becomes waste, the air thickens with what we cannot contain. We are chasing permanence on a planet that breathes impermanence in every cycle, every season, every dying leaf. And in doing so, we are unraveling the very web that holds us together.
The treadmill hums on, and we tell ourselves it’s too late to stop, too late to change. The tiger’s jaws feel closer now, but still, we run. We run because running distracts us, because it keeps us from seeing what we’ve done—to the earth, to each other, to ourselves.
But what if we stopped? What if we turned to face the tiger, to see its golden teeth not as a threat but as a reminder? The tiger does not come to destroy us. It comes to teach us that impermanence is not the enemy. It is the essence of life. The house we build will crumble, the name we carve will fade, and the soil will reclaim what we took from it. This is not a tragedy. It is the nature of existence. It is where beauty resides.
To stop running is not to surrender, but to see. To see that the treadmill, the tiger, the earth—they are all one and the same. The tiger waits not to devour us but to remind us of our place, to show us that what matters is not what we take or hold onto but what we nurture. The forests breathe for us. The rivers carry us forward. The air gives us life. To care for these things is to care for ourselves, to live in harmony with the impermanence we so fear.
In the end, the tiger’s jaws will close, as they always do. What remains will not be the houses or the cars or the carefully stacked bricks of a life spent running. What remains will be the world itself, fragile and fleeting, but alive. If we stop running, we might finally notice the world breathing around us—the soil beneath our feet, the wind in our lungs, the fleeting, fragile beauty of it all. And perhaps, in that moment, we will belong.
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