A Thing Rests by Changing

Heraclitus once said - “A thing rests by changing.”
It is a line that seems simple until you try to live it.
What did he mean?

Roger Von Oech offered a helpful way to understand it.
Picture yourself in a small rowboat on a river.
You have two options: row upstream toward where you have already been, or turn the boat around and row with the current toward where you are going.

Rowing backward is strenuous and tiring.
Rowing forward is smoother, lighter, and far more natural.
Not effortless, but aligned.

This perspective reminds us of a truth we sometimes resist: life is always changing. You cannot go back. You are not meant to relive yesterday or recreate a version of yourself that existed years ago. That person is gone. You are here.

In my book Born to Live: Finding Purpose on the Road to Hope, I divide this idea into three parts.

First, we learn from the past.
There is wisdom in what came before, but living there is dangerous. If you spend all your time revisiting who you were, what you had, or how things used to be, you will freeze your life in place. Nothing grows in a museum.

Second, look forward with hope.
Set goals. Dream deliberately. Allow yourself a vision of what tomorrow could be. But if you live only in the future, you will never actually arrive. You will chase the horizon endlessly, forever believing that real life begins somewhere else.

The third part is where Heraclitus offers his gift.
The good life is lived here, now, in the present.
Not behind you.
Not ahead of you.
Right where you are.

A thing rests by changing. You find peace not by rowing back to what used to be, but by allowing the current of life to carry you into what is next.

That is where rest lives.
That is where purpose lives.
That is where you live.