When I was a kid I used to cry a lot when I noticed things I thought were unfair. My parents used to tell me I was a Bakka, which I think was supposed to make me feel strong about my tearfulness. In Fremen legend, Bakka is “the weeper who mourns for all” humankind (from Frank Herbert’s Dune). I have always identified with this legend, and I still feel very moved by what I would now call injustice.
Of course, “cry me a river,” is also a way of dismissing someone who is trying to tell you about the negative thing they have experienced. I wanted to include the tagline “The river that I step in is not the river that I stand in,” as a way of reclaiming the dismissiveness of “cry me a river.” Plato attributes the tagline to Heraclitus, although it is often translated differently.
“You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you” from Wikiquote.
“Heraclitus, you know, says that everything moves on and that nothing is at rest; and, comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says that you could not step into the same river twice,” from this lecture.
The point is that everything changes and nothing stays the same. I am not sure I would go as far as to say that there are no permanent persisting objects, but I think the quote can remind us that “crying a river” can be useful when it helps to move things along.
Bakka's River 