Ebb and Flow
Flotsam, Jetsam and the Primordial Soup of it All
Heraclitus: Look closely at the dust in the air, Sophia. The river is too slow a metaphor sometimes. The truth is that you cannot grasp the world, because the world you touch now is already different from the world you named a moment ago. Every substance is rushing away from its current form.
Sophia: I see the frantic motion, Heraclitus. You speak of the constant dissolution—the pieces of yesterday, the flotsam and jetsam of countless spent identities, ceaselessly stirred back into the universal current. Is that where true nature resides? In the perpetual process of becoming undone?
All is flux, nothing stays still.
— Heraclitus (535-475 BC)
Heraclitus: Yes. Every object, every mountain, every thought, is just a temporary knot of energy. When that knot unravels, its components are thrown back into the churning mass. There is no still point. The universe is a great fire, eternally consuming itself only to be reborn in the same breath.
Sophia: And if everything is always moving, if every identity is temporary, then what is the path of wisdom? Do we try to slow the current, or do we learn to recognize the flow itself? I believe the only constant we can rely upon is the rhythm of that instability—that vast, chaotic, primordial soup of existence where structure and ruin are inseparable partners.
Heraclitus: The wisdom is to understand the struggle, the tension between what is here and what is leaving. To be fully present means accepting the impossibility of holding onto anything. All things yield their space to the next, forever.
Sophia: Then perhaps our peace is found not in stability, but in the dance. We are ourselves just currents within the greater ocean, temporary crests on a wave that will inevitably break and reform.
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Heraclitus
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