The Only Constant is Change

 

  Heraclitus the Greek philosopher wrote my title today twenty five centuries ago, give or take a decade or two.  I've always liked the exceptions to the rule such as this quote embodies. Nothing changes except change itself. I like to claim that I'm the exception to whatever rule I happen to be breaking.  

 Old people are good markers of the constant change Heraclitus noticed. My grandfather said when he was a kid there were no cars, only horses. I watched a lot of cowboy shows on TV at the time and thought that would be cool. "No Little Joe," grandpa said. "A city full of horses meant a plague of flies." 

  There was an old carriage house and stable on my childhood street. We used to go up in the loft and smoke cigarettes. We might have burned the place down except that the flammable materials, the hay and straw, had been cleaned out decades before. The building was eventually torn down to make room for a new house.  Cool old things are always torn down with a few exceptions. And many of the exceptions burn down and are forgotten.

  My father said there was no television when he was a kid. I couldn't have felt sorrier for him when he told us that than if he said he had grown up in a concentration camp. I firmly believed the world had been B&W before the 1950s. I told my own kids that when I was a kid there were no video games and no Internet. They were too distracted to listen. 

 The younger generation never understands how its elders survived without what they have. I had my cowboy shows and cartoons to look forward to. My father had radio dramas. My grandfather was taken on a steamboat from the pestilent city to the seashore where he built sand castles and collected sand dollars. Each generation has its consolations. 

  There are even consolations in hell, if we have the right attitude. That was said by a Buddhist. He was in a Japanese prison during WWII, not in the actual hell. He was imprisoned for protesting the government's use of religion to support the war. He was pretty much starved to death, but he was allowed to write letters which is how we know he found consolations in hell.

  A lot of people say there is no hell and paradoxically there's some basis for that belief. I've heard or read that hell is nothingness. I also read or heard that the only people who go there are those who want to be there. Who could that be? 

  The thing above about mixing religion and politics reminds me of the Bible verse that says there's nothing new under the sun. In French that's plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, or, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Give your castle a firm foundation.