Heraclitus: Fragments of Gold
Ima geek out about my man Heraclitus. It's a long time coming and some of the greats have already done it better than me.
This dude is an OG. Heraclitus was spitting fire before the term existed. Motherfucker recognized the firey passion that drives us. That fuels us. The spark of life that can enact change. The spark that transmutes elements from one form to another. It's in us. We burn like an inferno.
We are born of conflict. In each of us, that fire sparks an internal war. One that, unsurprisingly, reflects the chaotic order of the cosmos. We find ourselves an individual flame in an everchanging firestorm. The one firestorm that allows for many flames to propagate. So too are we: one made of many.
That's life. A paradox. One and many. Convergening opposites. A balance struck in eternal equilibrium. And each one of us has the power to change. To harness the everchanging energy that surrounds us and is within us. We can unearth a power that lays dormant in so many others.
The power, the spark, the everchanging cosmos; they don't define life. What defines life is how we direct that energy. How we change. Our impact. Our conflict. Heraclitus does not weep in the face of blazing adversity. He revels in it. So that he can direct the energy and define his own life. So that he can transmute it into philosophical gold. Even if all that's left of him is just fragments of gold. (Or if you're Democritus, maybe you'd laugh and say fragments of pyrite)