Perhaps it would help Embodied to consider it in this way:
1 Anicca – that nothing in this world can bring a permanent happiness in the long run.
2. Dukkha – despite our struggles, we will be subjected to much more suffering than pleasures if we remain in the rebirth process
3)Anatta – therefore, one is truly helpless in this struggle to attain “something of essence in this world”. That is just an illusion.
1. DELUSION leads to
2. SUFFERING which
3. CANNOT BE WHAT ULTIMATE EXISTENCE IS MADE OF
(Nibbana)
..or, reversing the order and the terms into their positives:
PERFECTION is where there is ETERNAL HAPPINESS because there is
A PERMANENT SENSE OF SATISFACTION.
I struggled here not to apply the same English word for more than one lakkhana, and I did not do so in order to keep to the tradition of defining the three with different words. Otherwise, anicca is in fact suffering in our experience of it,and both it and dukkha taken singly or both together as one experience, cannot be Atta, cannot be (the essence of) the PERFECT STATE OF BEING. In the final analyss all is Anatta.
So, as Lal has pointed out here and in other posts,more than one word or phrase can be found for any of the three lakkhana; they will be the ones that best embody one’s experiences of and reflections on life, they will vary according to the individual, so seeing into life itself as deep as one can go is the start without bothering about Pali words at all. The Pali terms will later be the guidance to see better -and correctly- into the Message of the Self-Perfected One; i.e. how to attain that Perfect State.