Heraclitus, Greek philosopher: “Everything flows, and nothing abides, everything gives way, and nothing stays fixed”
An ancient idea about constant change still explains why yesterday’s “safe” plan can become tomorrow’s blind spot at work and at home.
Heraclitus of Ephesus lived around the fifth century BCE, and almost everything we know about him comes from fragments. That feels strangely appropriate… as his whole message was that nothing stays still for long anyway.
The line most often linked to him, as per my title, says it plainly: “Everything flows, and nothing abides, everything gives way, and nothing stays fixed.” However you translate it, the meaning hits the same nerve. Change is not the disruption. Change is the baseline.
Resistance to change
If we’re honest, most of us tend to resist that idea. We keep using the software we know because switching feels risky. We assume our customers want what they wanted last year. We manage projects the way we were taught because it once worked well. At first that looks sensible. Over time, it can become stubbornness dressed up as stability.
Heraclitus is famous for comparing life to a river. You can’t step into the same river twice because new water is always flowing past. It’s a simple image, which is probably why it has survived for more than two thousand years. But the part people forget is that you’re not the same person stepping in, either. Your priorities shift. Your skills improve. Your patience shortens. Your appetite for risk grows or shrinks depending on what just happened.
So what do you actually do with that? It doesn’t mean chasing every trend or reinventing everything every quarter. It means assuming movement instead of assuming permanence. Check in on what feels what we consider “settled.” Revisit the processes you haven’t questioned in a while. Pay attention to small signals before they turn into loud problems. And when something goes wrong, treat it less like a personal indictment and more like feedback from a system that has changed.
I find there’s something oddly freeing in Heraclitus’ view. If we see everything as moving, then setbacks don’t feel the same, more just a learning experience. And success isn’t permanent either. Both are part of a larger current.
The river keeps flowing. The real choice is whether you’re willing to notice.
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