Dark Writes

Ben Franklin once said, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, that in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Or, at least, that’s what most people think. The notion was actually first coined in 1716 by Christopher Bullock in The Cobbler of Preston, and again by Daniel Defoe in The Political History of the Devil (1726).

Regardless of who first came up with the phrase, it’s worthy of unpicking somewhat. Death, by its nature, is a certainty – from the moment we are conceived, we’re all dying. But the inclusion of taxes in the idiom is somewhat spurious – does a remote South American tribe know of taxes? Or the hermit who builds a shelter in the forest and lives off the land?

There’s a philosophy I’d rather subscribe to, and it’s much older than Franklin’s declaration. Around 500 years BCE, Greek philosopher Heraclitus said,

“You can never step in the same river twice.” 

Think about that for a moment. If you have a habit of stepping in rivers, you’d probably argue that you’ve stepped in the same river many, many times. But was it the same river? The water is always changing, renewing; things floating in the water move past, fish swim, pollutants gather and disperse… it might be the same location of the river, but the river itself is always different.

This holds true for so many aspects of life. Did you take a breath? Was the air you breathed the same as the last breath you took? Of course not, because, like the river, the air around us is constantly changing, evolving, moving, renewing. Unless you’ve got a plastic bag over your head.

And there’s another change too. When you stepped in that river or drew in that breath, were you the same person you were last time? If you’re reading these words, perhaps not. Perhaps you never heard of Heraclitus before, or learned Franklin wasn’t the first to utter the phrase. Whatever you’ve done, whoever you’ve become, minute by minute, day by day, you are never the same person you were before.

Change is, by virtue of its existence, the only actual certainty in life. Every moment is new and fresh, saturated with possibilities, horrors, hope and fear. Everything around us is in a state of flux, and so are we. Change is life; without it there would be no life. And if you believe in life after death, we can even see Franklin’s certainty as just one more change, from a state of mortality to some other state.

Let go of the past – you can’t change it. Embrace the future, even if it looks unappealing and frightening. Unburden yourself of past failures; let go of the things that no longer serve you well. Embrace change, because with or without your consent, it will happen. 

Change is always with you; it is truly the only certainty in life.