We have several little children in our lives just now. They each seem to go through stages. For instance, there is a "No!" stage. During it, the child responds to every direction with "No!", sometimes while complying with the direction and sometimes not. When we start hearing one No! after another, we nod knowingly to each other and agree that this child is going through that stage.
Kids are often a very good stimulus for ideas and these stages make me ask myself "Am I going through a stage?" For that matter, is my whole life a stage? Is the outbreak of life on earth just a stage? I think that some modern astronomers are considering the known universe as possibly one of several universes. If that is the case, maybe our universe is in a stage of universe development?
The Buddhists emphasize that our conscious thoughts pass quickly. I can look at a high level of anger or sadness as just a passing stage. Often, an hour later, I have forgotten about the mood completely. Lynn and I used to try to give ourselves an hour before discussing something that we had a strong disagreement about. Later, we learned that if we thought of putting the matter on our calendar for a later date, instead of just planning to let a little time go by on the clock, the whole thing simply dissolved before the date arrived. We took that to be good evidence that it was just a stage.
