One is ten thousand to me. What does it mean?
It’s an Heraclitus’ quote and one of the strongest belief I have.
I got really inspired by Heraclitus’ thought to the point that I strongly believe that Heraclitus was certainly engaged as I am in raising awareness and fighting bullying throughout all his thought-provoking sayings.
I’ll demonstrate why right away: firstly, I will clarify the intrinsec meaning of his teaching about change (Panta rhei, ”everything flows”) and secondly his strong anti-bullying commitment.
No man ever steps in the same river twice. On those entering the same river, more water flows over and over again. This is the famous Heraclitus’ saying on ever-present change in the universe.
“Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers“.
Everything changes and nothing remains still … and … you cannot step twice into the same stream.
All has been continously changing. What we experience changes us.
We are the same while changing and are still changing while being the same.
What makes us ever-different is awareness.
By assuming that every experience , either good and bad, makes sense in raising awareness, perhaps bad experiences are more effective in building awareness because of the suffering, the pain and the tormet they let on you.
The more the suffering the bigger and faster the awareness.
In such cases, awareness starts as soon as you take off the mask and abandon silence.
Awareness begins once you earn self-confidence.
Awareness makes you speak loud to be heard. Awareness makes you ready to draw your sword and fight it out, once you have overcome fear, which is the worst enemy.
And your words become alike swords. So as in fighting bullying.
Only then can bullying be openly denounced, tackled and managed both as a personal problem and as collective emergency and social stigma.
Denounce it to make it known and censure such a bad behaviour. Whatever form bullying has, however many appearances it may have, it’s vital to find adequate answers and real solutions.
Victims are first of all human beings, who are exposed to continuous aggression, humiliation, persecution, violation, and in case of workplace bullying, professional step down.
They don’t react because the don’t know exactly what they’re experiencing. They think it depends on something they have or don’t have done.
That’s wrong, this is exactly what bullies would victims think about themselves.
For that reason those who experience bullying or engage themselves in fighting bullying can’t step in the same river twice.
No one is any longer the same he was before.
Back to the thesis of Heraclitus’ commitment in fighting bullying, the reason is hidden in the following fragment.
“The Ephesians deserve, man for man, to be hung, and the youth to leave the city, inasmuch as they have banished Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying: “Let no one of us excel, and if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and among other people.”
Instead of “We will have none who is best among us” Heraclitus declares ” One man is ten thousand, if he is the best“.
In most of cases bullying occurs on victims distinguishing themselves from the others, for beauty, knowledge, influence, thought, ethics, beliefs, energy or simply noticeable for being different and thinking differently from the mass.
The bullies strive to stalk and chase away people that are independent, different, influent, and unwilling to follow them and being prone.
Hermodorus was one of those who stand out. So he would have been elsewhere and among others.
As Hermodorus is ten thousand to Heraclitus so one is ten thousand to me.
Saving one life from bullying is worthier more than being followed by ten thousand who don’t really need to be saved from bullying.
