OKIE IN EXILE

Whenever I cross the South Canadian River headed south into Pontotoc County, Oklahoma where I grew up, I always think how glad I am not to be driving a herd of cattle across it. Westerns, in particular Lonesome Dove, which featured such dramatic scenes as cattle being driven across a river, where danger is exemplified by lack of control, made an impression upon me and that impression has lasted until the current time.
The Greek philosopher Heraclites said, “No man can cross the same river twice because the second time it is a different river and a different man.” The first reaction of some upon hearing that is to nod at its profundity and say, “Yeah, man, cool — pass the bong.” And I will admit that I still find some truth there as I look back upon my life at instances where I’ve forded some rivers and been changed.
Every five years or so I look back at the person I was five years before, shake my head, and bemoan how stupid that individual was. I started this at about age 20. Now at 45 I am still doing it, but I am aware that I will do it again when I’m 50.
People do change over time. No one who’s lived long enough to notice that the melanin has become too tired to make the trip from the follicle to the hair or that the collagen just ain’t doing the job holding the jowls up any more will argue with me. Change isn’t always good.
But I am still the same individual I was when I was 40 or 35 or 20 or 15 or, to take a radical yet true perspective, that night when Mom and Dad decided they could make it with half an hour’s less sleep the next day.
A philosopher might argue with me — it’s something they’ve been known to do — but it seems to me like Ol’ Heraclites was trying to break time into atoms which bore no relation on one another. The truth is, within the life of a man, every moment is affected by what has gone before and will effect what comes after. This is also a radical, yet true, perspective. With it, I have difficulty separating myself from those who preceded me and those who will follow me, but there it is anyway.
I watch older people, and I watch the young. They talk freely about hygiene issues, about their health, and about their families. We spend the first part of our lives learning how to build a façade, an image, and we spend the second half of our lives learning how to take it down. An image is like clothing. It covers that which we don’t want people to see, that which we are afraid doesn’t compare favorably to everyone else’s. When we are children, we are like Adam and Eve, unashamed. When we are old, we wisely forget shame, some do at least
The rivers we cross cleanse us, test us, and change us. Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” He was wrong again. That which does not kill us sometimes leaves us damned near dead. But as Tennyson put in Ulysses mouth, “That which we are, we are.”
The community that we are living in here in Pittsburg, Kansas, America has been crossing some rivers lately itself. We’ve changed leadership at the public schools and we’ve changed leadership at city hall. During the same week we learned that an important employer is pulling out and that the president of the university is retiring.
We will change, but we will be the same. That which we are, we are.
A man, a human, is not a point in time. We must take the view from eternity and see the whole. Because of the limit on ourselves as being creatures in time, we see most clearly that which has gone before, while that which is to come remains murky, but it springs from the past and present and is a part of us.
One day I will cross a river and those who I’ve touched will trek the dusty trail alone. I will have been changed by them and they by me, but we will all go on. That which was and is and is to be, forever and ever, amen.

Bobby Winters is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University.