The river flows

 

So, this birthday is a big milestone, one would suppose, based on the Beatles song that identifies this age as a turning point, the beginning of some sort of uncertain phase of life. Of course, it actually has no operational significance; tomorrow will be much the same as yesterday in any practical sense.

As I was looking back through old posts for insight into how to characterize this moment, if was first led to Heraclitus, who is famously to have said that you can't step into the same river twice - that change is constant. Less famously, Heraclitus can said to have been topped (in the tradition of old stand-up comedians) by Cratylus, who added to that observation the idea that you cannot even step into the same river once. Here's how the Oxford Reference puts it:

[T]he river is changing and gone even as a single event of stepping occurs. The point is that reality is utterly particular (one individual event, one moment of time, one individual thing after another). Any adequate thought would have to match the flux with change of its own, so any attempt to categorize reality is like trying to cage the winds

Now, I am certainly not going to say that Cratylus is spot on, but it sure does feel that way these days. Between COVID and about a jillion unknowns at work, it certainly seems that every particular moment is its own universe, one which bears only coincidental resemblance to the instant that precedes or follows it. It is not without consequence that "pivot" has been the word of the year - whether it is a profound philosophical truth or not, it has been a workaday reality that change has been our only constant. Which just makes it harder to pick any one of these moments as a milestone or watershed.

But contra Hearaclitus and Cratylus, my rifling through old blogs demonstrated that there has been constancy of a sort over the years. My reliance on Epicurean philosophy, Stoicism, and Absurdism is a thread; so is my series of summer self-improvement programs (at least when I had summers). I was having a conversation with someone the other day that brought home to me how much lore and understanding of the field my 24 years in the community and technical college system have given me. And of course, my family unit of me, Coco, and Selkie is still going strong. Maybe Jean-Baptiste Karr had it right when he said plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

In any case, the river flows on. Last night in our hot tub soak, Coco suggested we visualize a lazy river float as part of our reflection/mediation time. The river of life hasn't been so lazy lately, but that doesn't mean the river of the soul can't be. 

I'll think I'll just float past this "utterly particular" not-milestone with that in mind.