Isn’t it curious how ancient wisdom has a way of drifting into the present day?
The line attributed to Greek philosopher Heraclitus is “everything flows”. Endlessly transformed, it has survived the passage of 2,500 years as “The only constant is change.”
Centuries later, another voice added a ripple:
“For things to remain the same, everything must change.”
Different era, same truth rising to the surface.
It makes you wonder how a thought can survive for thousands of years and still feel so compelling.
Perhaps because though the stream moves,
we do not move with it.
Our world rushes forward - faster work, louder demands, quicker reactions -
yet inside, the human patterns remain familiar:
uncertainty, hope, resistance, the quiet wish for clarity.
Stephen Hawking once wrote that perfection doesn’t exist. “One of the basic rules of the Universe is that nothing is perfect…without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.”
If that’s true, then we are all beautifully unfinished,
shaped not by certainty or knowledge or progress but by the flow around us.
Maybe that’s why these old words still speak to us:
because they recognise something of the Universe within each one of us.
Everything flows.
Except us - still learning, still weathering the current.
Still a boulder in the stream.