Yesterday while I was out walking, looking at and feeling the effects of spring, I got to thinking about the cycle of annuals, especially those we plant, that grow up and charm us each year, and then die.

Everything goes through the same cycle, perennials that live longer than a summer, animals that live varying lengths of time, trees that live for hundreds and some thousands of years, and even inanimate things: from clouds to rocks, even the majestic mountains I was looking at -- all appear and disappear sooner or later.

I remembered sitting on the beach, watching the waves rolling in. Over and over, wave after wave continuously moving to shore where they splash across the sand, ending their life cycles and slipping gracefully back to the ocean. Yet all the essentials of a wave remain; the form changes.

The form changes. The essential remains.

Some day, we're told, the oceans will disappear, too, as well as the earth, the sun and perhaps the entire solar system, the universe, the universes.

Thoughts, too, appear and disappear in awareness.

Awareness remains.