This is exactly what Elio lacks and tries to find in himself, a holistic idea of who he is and when Oliver demonstrates his many contradictions with yet the fact that he "knows himself", it intimidates and spins Elio's worldview.

Oliver wrote a book on Heraclitus, the main connector between his ideology, characterization, and the theory of universal flux, that one may not necessarily be one's past temporal part -- but one who continues it, like an illusion of movement.