Reflections on a fragment of Heraclitus

 

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” – Heraclitus 

Heraclitus is not merely conducting a study of hydrology.  This fragment captures the ephemerality of life.  A river as a physical feature is defined by its flux.  If it stood still, it would be a lake or a pond.  Constant change is no less inherent to life on earth.  Our world is necessarily transient, the planet itself is moving at a thousand miles an hour, our bodies alter with age and our minds with experience.  

Most change is gradual.  It is not noticeable day to day, but if you look back, it is unlikely that you feel you are the same person you were a year ago, or even two months prior.  It takes such a moment of perspective to comprehend the forces moving just under our feet. 

However, there are some occasions when this usually entropic, gradual change becomes very apparent.  This is when we say goodbye.  Despite our longing for an eternity in a place, time, or with a person, we must say goodbye.  It is by the river-like currents of existence that makes this longing impossible.  

When we say goodbye to someone, we experience every second and detail of them in a flash.  We become conscious of what we became in their presence, for better or worse. In any serious goodbye, we are closing a chapter of our life.  If we are given the chance to see this place of person again, we won’t see them in the way we used to.  Age and time will change us, and we will return with a new eye. 

In this sense, every goodbye is a death.  A death of part of ourselves.  It might be best to treat goodbyes in this way, because it reminds us that we can’t return to what was.  Just as we will never step in the same river twice.