You Can't Step in the Same River Twice

So take your shoes off, get your hair wet and maybe do a cannonball.

“A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not same man.”

I’ve seen this quote attributed to ancient philosophers Heraclitus and Seneca. It’s a key theme of Prousts’ In Search of Lost Time (Le Recherche) Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again, and Wilder’s Our Town, and probably a thousand other stories in a hundred different languages. It’s a personal favorite.

I had the surreal experience of dropping my oldest daughter off for a one-week stay at the college campus that I attended. At 2am, the noise outside our B&B window came to life with sounds of 20-somethings leaving bars. My indignant and sleepless brain cried “that was ME just a few years ago!” (ok, maybe more than a few). Jack & Coke, cigarette smoke, late night pizza and bottomless margaritas. I never wanted those days to end, not because they were perfect, but because I felt at home. It was a glorious river….and I went to that “river” and found it largely unchanged, but I am chang…