So, here I was at some social work conference doing one of those self-awareness exercises: “Choose a photo from the assembled snap shots on the table, and write about it…” Aha! One of those “cut it out of a magazine and run with it” cheapo versions of a Thematic Apperception test. Well, okay. I’m game. The pictures had quotes, too. “React to the picture and the caption.” Got it. Free association. Here goes. Scanning the field, I selected a shot.
Oh my! “You can’t step into the same stream twice.” Good old Heraclitus. Shades of Dr. Gurland’s, “Introduction to Philosophy” class, lo, those many years ago! Interesting that I, once an undergraduate Philosophy major, would pull that picture to write about. I hadn’t even read the quote at the top of the page. I didn’t have my glasses on. I chose it for the picture–a river flowing over rocks–a “falls.” The scene placed me back in Williamsville, at the Falls on Main Street…the old red mill, the meandering park, the bridge above the river boasting that quaintly rustic restaurant, its signature fare those excellent fried oysters…a unique place and time in my life, after all.
That Falls was my place of serenity, of wonder, and compensation–it’s beauty and the eternity of it soothing the pain of my own personal, “You can’t step into the same stream twice.” Such foolishness–to finally marry my high school sweetheart at the age of 58. So much water over the falls, and under the bridge! Too much, really. Way too much.
Who was it?–Epictetus, I think–who said, “One must not tie a ship to a single anchor, nor life to a single hope.” Well, Thank You God! I could never be accused of that! I’ve juggled a gazillion different hopes, reinvented myself as many times, and always with new enthusiasm and positive outlooks. The proverbial Comeback Kid! At least on the surface. Who knows what lies beneath? I do know you get old. You get tired. And now I also know: “Beware the seduction of an old dream.”
Just for the record: He was never my “single anchor.” I was my own anchor, and my own best hope. Was that the problem or the possibility? Whatever. Apparently, Epictetus would appove.