Answer:
Or, as novelist Elena Ferrante recently put it: "We have nothing to fear from change, and we shouldn't panic about being different."
If we learn to handle this endless stream, we can manage life itself – which, several millennia after Heraclitus, in our uncertain and rapidly changing times at This is particularly resonant.
Since the advent of mankind, many great artists, writers, and philosophers have struggled with the notion of change, and also with our impulse to resist change.
"There's something inside of us that makes us want to remain a child forever…rejecting everything unfamiliar," writes Carl Jung, a psychologist and 20th-century author in 'The Stages of Life'. , pondering the words of Heraclitus.
For these thinkers, refusing to accept that change is an inevitable and normal part of life causes trouble, pain, and disappointment. If we accept that things are constantly changing and fleeting, they say, everything goes more smoothly.
So does the 'life as flow' theory imply that we must be resigned to all the challenges, changes and crises that life throws at us?
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It doesn't have to be, says John Sellars, author of the new book 'Lessons of Stoicism' and lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London.
According to Sellars, Heraclitus' theory was not 'give up' but 'acceptance'.
Change was a favorite subject of Stoicism, a school of Greek philosophy (in part inspired by Heraclitus) based on a system of reasoning and views on the natural world.
'Stoic' in everyone's imagination is suffering without complaining, 'smiling and resigned'.
But this philosophy is much more than that. In his book, Sellars combines the thoughts of three Stoics - Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius - showing how their ideas can help us today.
