"The only thing permanent is change itself"

This isn't actually a shower thought—it's ancient wisdom repackaged. Heraclitus said "the only constant is change" 2,500 years ago, and it's still blowing minds today. Why? Because it reveals a fundamental paradox of existence.

If everything changes, including the fact that things change, then change itself must be unchanging. The one permanent rule is that nothing is permanent. It's a paradox wrapped in an oxymoron.

Nothing lasts forever:

• Your relationships will evolve
• Your body will age
• Your thoughts will shift
• Your problems will transform into different problems

But also:

• Your pain will pass
• Your failures aren't final
• Your current state isn't your permanent state
• You're always becoming, never just being

This is simultaneously the most comforting and terrifying truth:

Comforting: Going through hell? This too shall pass.

Terrifying: In heaven? This too shall pass.

The wisdom is learning to:

• Enjoy good times without clinging
• Endure bad times without despair
• Appreciate the present without demanding it stay
• Accept that letting go is the only way to hold on

You can't step in the same river twice. The water flows, the river changes, and you yourself are different from moment to moment. The river that was is not the river that is.

Here's where it gets really trippy: even this philosophy will change. Your understanding of change will itself change. The way you relate to impermanence is impermanent.

You're reading this now, but by the time you finish, both the words and you will have changed. The thought you had at the beginning isn't the same thought at the end.

Finding peace in impermanence is itself impermanent. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the goal isn't to achieve some permanent state of enlightenment, but to keep dancing with change.

The only way to win the game is to stop trying to make the board stay the same.