This too will pass: the proverb is a comfort in hard times and a reason to savor the good ones

This too shall pass is the kind of line people offer when you are in the middle of something hard, and it is easy to receive it as a soft, well-meaning nothing. Hold on, it says, this will not last forever. That much is true, and it turns out to be more useful than it sounds. But the proverb has a second edge that people conveniently forget, one that is sharper and, oddly, more valuable: it applies just as much to the good times as to the bad. The very same words that comfort you on the worst day are a quiet instruction on the best one, and taking both halves seriously is what makes the phrase worth more than a platitude.

The comfort half really works

Start with the familiar use, the reminder in a painful stretch that it will end. This is not merely nice to hear; deliberately taking the long view is a genuine, tested way to steady yourself. In a series of studies fittingly titled This Too Shall Pass, Emma Bruehlman-Senecal and Ozlem Ayduk found that adopting a distant-future perspective on a current stressor, deliberately reminding yourself that the situation is temporary, reduced emotional distress, and that a key reason was what they called an impermanence focus, the recognition that the difficulty will not last.

The reason this helps points to a quiet trick the mind plays in the grip of pain: it treats the feeling as permanent. In the thick of grief, anxiety, or a terrible week, some part of you quietly assumes it will always feel exactly this bad, and that false sense of permanence is a large part of what makes distress so heavy. Simply widening the frame, picturing yourself a month or a year from now, when this particular storm has blown through, loosens that grip. It does not erase the pain or pretend the problem is not real, and it is not a license to wait out situations that actually need to be dealt with. What it corrects is the specific lie the mind tells about how long the feeling will last. So this too will pass is not just a kind thing to say; the deliberate act of believing it is one of the more reliable tools we have for getting through hard days.

The forgotten half makes the good times sweeter

Now the part people skip, because it sounds like a downer: the good passes too. The pleasant season, the easy stretch, the age your child is right now, the ordinary happy Tuesday, all of it is equally temporary. This seems like a thought to avoid, but the research suggests it is actually the doorway to appreciating what you have. In a study wryly named It’s a Wonderful Life, Minkyung Koo and colleagues found that people who imagined a good thing in their lives never having happened, mentally subtracting it, ended up feeling more grateful and more positive about it than people who simply reflected on the good thing directly.

The mechanism is the same impermanence, turned the other way. When something good feels permanent, we stop seeing it; the happy phase becomes the wallpaper of our lives, unnoticed precisely because we assume it will always be there. Deliberately remembering that it will not, that this too will pass, snaps it back into focus and restores its value. The knowledge that a season is fleeting is exactly what makes it worth savoring while it is here. So the second half of the proverb is not a threat but a gift: the fact that good times end is the very reason to be present for them, and a light touch of that awareness is one of the surest routes to gratitude for a life you might otherwise take for granted.

One truth, two uses

Put together, this too will pass is a single fact about impermanence with two very different jobs. In hard times it is a rope to hold: this will end, so endure, and let the long view lighten the weight. In good times it is a bell to notice: this will end too, so look up and savor it before it goes. The same sentence that consoles you also wakes you up, depending on which kind of moment you are in.

Two honest cautions keep it from being misused. It is not an excuse to passively wait out problems that need action rather than patience; some things pass faster if you deal with them, and impermanence is not a substitute for effort. And it should never curdle into a way of numbing yourself against the good, holding people and joys at arm’s length because they will not last. That gets it exactly wrong. The point is not to withhold your heart from what is temporary but to give it fully, precisely because it is. Everything you love is passing, and so is everything that hurts, and knowing both is what lets you meet each one properly: to hold on through what is hard, and to hold close what is not, while you still can.