At lunch with my friend Kenneth, we enjoyed our usual dose of highly personal conversations laced with laughter. Crunching on kale mercifully covered in parmesan (we tend to frequent hippie joints), I remember feeling grateful for our enduring friendship. I’m used to that feeling when I’m with Kenneth, not only because he is an altogether enjoyable person to be with, but also because he has had many of the basic physical movements we all take for granted each and every day taken away from him over the course of his young life. Unexpected however on this day, was his revelation on how he is now looking at life and even more shocking was, and is, my reaction.
He said that he now looks at life as if he is a river. We are all rivers, meant to go through life in a certain direction. That in itself sounds great, plus it matches the crystal encrusted dreamcatcher decor around us. He went on to say that his ultimate take on this river analogy is “Do what comes easy in life.”
“Wait, what?” I asked rather brusquely. He explained that as physical functions such as driving became even more difficult for him and subsequently impossible, he let them go and let them become part of his past with a lot of peace with this view. A river moves and goes with the flow, literally. A river has memories of the past and can be proud of them or learn from them but doesn’t try to go backwards. It can look at the trees up the hill and appreciate them and wonder what it must be like to be over there or be one of them, but if it tries to change and eek it’s way up it is going to be largely unsuccessful and seep down back to where it’s supposed to be. Okay, I thought at first, maybe he needs to look at things this way, not me, but knowing that my keen friend was onto something I tried on applying “Do what comes easiest” to my own life.
My initial reaction was a physical discomfort that is probably attached to my American DNA that screams
“Climb! Reach! Go for the goal! If it’s easy, it’s probably not worth it.”
Then I flipped it around to what feels more comfortable (at first) in my gut which is
“Do what comes hardest; do that which is most difficult!”
Only now that started to sound crazy too, and yet it is how I consciously and unconsciously wanted to live my life in many aspects. Only now every time my stress level rises because I haven’t finished something I need to do yet or haven’t followed through on something I really want to do, I imagine a river and seriously the stress is alleviated or at least mitigated. My favorite thing about the river analogy is that rivers aren’t stagnant or boring, they are gorgeous, dynamic and important. They nourish the life around them, they bounce, skip, they are playful and yet fulfill a serious purpose here on Earth. I will ALWAYS have hugely-exciting-earnest-random-serious-international-goofy-idealistic goals. The stress I have to achieve them on a daily basis however, is all but gone when I picture the River. I haven’t finished unpacking this analogy. It has been a jarring but helpful, and shall I say healthful, experience so far. I still bristle a bit when I imagine the concept of ‘doing what comes easiest’ but then I picture my River and appreciate the results.
Where is your River going? How is it going to get there? With stress, regret and clinching your wrists around what is ‘yours,’ or with an open mind and open hands?
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