River of Life / Life of the River:

For many years I have been using the river as a metaphor to make sense of life. It twists, it turns, sometimes it’s calm and sunny, sometimes it has rapids and you get tossed. But all the while I’m moving forward floating on the river that is Life.

This New Year, as I set poetic intentions for the coming year, a line came through that says “I become the River of Life.” This took my metaphor to a new place, where the River is not something carrying me, but rather the essence of who I truly am.

With this idea of becoming the River of Life in mind, I had been inspired to try and meet challenges and obstacles with more grace and ease.

I usually feel more like a snag when an obstacle arises and it takes some finagling to get myself back in motion.

I wanted to explore the energetics of fluidity in my nervous system, just as water flows around a rock in the river. It’s path is altered, but it also continues moving forward.

When I set this intention, I was seeing water as something to embody but the obstacle as an adversary, something to be skirted around - ideally with more grace and fluidity.

As I studied the river we live on, it dawned on me that the river is not merely the water, but it is also the banks and the bottom. Earthly form channels the fluid water, they are inseparable when considering “the river”.

The obstacles, like rocks and fallen trees, take on new beauty in considering this. They add a dynamism to the flow, they oxygenate the waters, they create the beauty of riffles on the water and the music of bubbling rapids. They are integral to healthy waters, the obstacles imbue the Life of the River.

It reasons then that if I am to become the River of Life, which is inherently connected to the Life of the River, I am both the fluid waters and the rocky obstacles.

There is an interdependence between my becoming and the challenges and obstacles I meet.

With this perspective shift the challenges feel less like something to navigate around and “deal with”, instead I now whisper to myself “what does this obstacle have to offer me?”.

And with that I find the softness to move with more grace and ease in all things.