Changes: Time is a River

Wow, September is half gone. Makes me think of that old Steve Miller tune (Fly Like and Eagle): "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future!" Kinda like a river. I know that's a familiar image. I have always liked the old expression, you can never step in the same river twice. That one goes all the way back to Heraclitus, who came early to the notion that change is the engine that runs everything. Surely we must all realize this, as our lives are filled with changes. And perhaps that is why some of us resist change and wish to hold back the flowing river of time.

As we grow older these observations have a somewhat graver sense of inevitability. It's not just that we can track the changes in the mirror, that stark reminder of how much of our own water has already flowed under the bridge, but in just about everything going on around us. At my time of life it's impossible to ignore such things.

But it wasn't always so. When we are young changes are seen as welcome, bringing new possibilities and washing away a past we're only too eager to see the last of. One of my only published poems was on this theme: "In Early Youth the Forward Flow." Up to a certain point it seems very difficult not to wish that time would move more quickly. We can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. It's funny how we always seemed to believe it would bring something better.

I'm no longer sure that's true, and perhaps I'm not alone in sensing that the world feels itself to be growing old again. It's hard to keep hope for a better future alive when there is so much evidence to suggest that it could just as easily go the other way. But then perhaps that's just the way it always seems when you've been paying too much attention to history.

On the other hand, while at times such as this I like to remind myself that these things too shall pass -- nothing endures, and that's probably a good thing -- I wonder if that's not the wrong attitude. Very likely one day soon we'll look back and say that these were the good ol' days. And there we are with our eyes fixed on the rear view mirror. Much better to enjoy the moment while it's here, because soon that old river will have done flowed right on by us, or to borrow a similar line from a different tune, we'll "believe we're gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away."