Our Marriot van driver was taking us to the airport when a pleasant conversation revealed that he had been a highly successful sound man for a major New York studio prior to moving to Tampa four years ago.
He was doing very well in the sound business but he got carried away with his own success.
He was meeting all of the Hollywood movie stars that he used to admire on the big screen. This exposure to fame caused him to follow their example and he began using drugs.
He became addicted to cocaine that led to a divorce and separation from his little girl.
Although he is now driving a van he does not regret moving to Tampa because “sanity and health are more important than fame or wealth.”
Heraclitus said that, “You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”
In 500 BC the river of change was a tiny trickle. Currently, the river of change exists at flood tide, roaring so swiftly that if you put your big toe in the stream you’re liable to be swept away.
Although we may, at times, seem overwhelmed by the changes going around us, we can be encouraged by Edith Wharton’s words:
In spite of illness, in spite of sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things and happy in small ways.