HERACLITUS V. PARMENIDES – ON THE DEBATE OF “CHANGE”

Let me introduce you to these two thought-provoking old guys. And they are old. They’re ancient.

Heraclitus and Parmenides. You might have heard of them. You might vaguely remember their names brought up on an exam question for a philosophy class (which you hopefully answered correctly).

If you haven’t heard of these two philosophers, this will be fun. You might be familiar with their iconic sayings though.

Note: These are obviously oversimplified explanations of what they said. And it’ll be an extremely long post if I were to write a detailed explanation of their beliefs. So go ahead and do a quick Google search so you can find articles other (more qualified) people wrote to inform you all you need and want to know about this topic.

Heraclitus believed that “no man steps in the same river twice”. In order words, the only thing constant in the world is change. Confused? I’ll clarify in a minute.

On the other hand, we have a counterargument from Parmenides who believed that change is impossible and an illusion.

He argues that Heraclitus’s claiming of change existing in the world is because he saw the world through his senses. Parmenides’s viewed the world through reasoning, not through senses, and concluded that existence and reality are uniformed, unchanging. He believed our senses gives us an appearance of how the world is like (we see changes), but our reasoning may help to explain how the world really is (reality is pretty consistent).

You’re saying, okay, great for the history and philosophy lesson, but what’s the point of this? How is this random Jeopardy trivia supposed to change my life?

Here’s my opinion on this. Both men are not wrong in their beliefs.

How can both men be right in their way of thinking? Isn’t that contradictory? Hypocritical?

As you get to know me, you’ll learn that I don’t necessarily side one way or the other most of the time. I tend to believe in both proposed theories.

The world simultaneously changes and stays consistent.

Now how can you use this to your advantage?

A six letter word touted by self-improvement gurus, entrepreneurs, psychologists, wellness coaches, athletes, your grandma, just about any living, breathing human being.

HABITS.

IN THIS CORNER – HERACLITUS!

Let’s see how we can creatively take advantage of good old Uncle Heraclitus’s advice: the world runs on change.

Conscious change causes fear to arise in humans. We don’t like change because it’s unfamiliar and unexpected, and unpredictable. We love stability. We love as much control in our lives as we can get, especially because so many factors in the world are out of our direct control.

However, in order to continue to grow and reach our most successful selves, change is necessary. This means forming better habits. Oh, you already have good habits, you say? Well you can always improve on something because none of us are perfect 100% of the time.

Let’s look at this example.

Bailey decided she wanted to become a published writer, so she took these steps towards achieving her dream. So the following week, a motivated and excited Bailey signed up for writing courses, started practicing her writing every day, set up a blog, and connected with writers who were published.

Bailey made some changes.

But every conscious change must be paired with consistency or you will never reach your end goal.

AND IN THIS CORNER – PARMENIDES!

Recap of good old Uncle Parmenides’s advice: change is impossible. He believes that existence is uniformed and unchanging.

So here’s my take on this.

Reality: Our life purpose has been set from the moment of our creation. Each and every one of us has a life purpose. This is constant.

Appearance: We believe we haven’t reached our life purpose yet. I mean nobody wakes up at birth knowing what their mission in life is. So we tirelessly search to discover what we think we don’t know about ourselves. That’s why there’s an immense community of people trying to help each other find their life purpose. Which is totally cool! I love self-improvement resources. Except we’ve always known our life purpose. It’s always existed. We just weren’t conscious of it yet.

By following your inner guidance, intuition, forming good habits and consistently working to achieve clarity about yourself, you will get to the point where your life purpose comes into your conscious awareness.

Let’s check in on Bailey.

Little did Bailey know that her life purpose was to help kids and teens going through a rough, emotionally heavy time. When she practiced writing daily and eventually published some books, she learned from fans that the comedic superhero stories she wrote helped to bring joy and empower them to have confidence in themselves and recognize their own strengths.

In Conclusion

Put in the work, follow your inner guidance, and form good habits (change) to help you support your best self so that you can reach (or recognize) your life purpose (constant).

Hope you learned something today. Best wishes to everyone!

And remember, “Every story is worth the read. Someone (some overworked and ink-stains-on-the-clothes lovely soul) took the time to write it.”