Healing: The Flow of the River
Sometimes it feels like I’m floating in a river of time and consequence. On occasion, the river is moving slowly; there’s time to admire the scenery, and float quietly and gently through the turns and twists.
In other times, it feels the river is rushing, pounding and driving me towards a waterfall I can barely see, and even less comprehend.
And it feels like I’m being forced into a future I do not want.
But the river is relentless. The current is made of biology and psychology, nature and nurture, wisdom and foolishness, certainty and fear, liberally sprinkled with time, and the ever present elusiveness of questions.
Just when I feel like I’ve gotten my head above water, and am learning to balance in the currents, the flow changes, the river twists, and again I find myself underwater, struggling to breathe in a torrent of doubt, despair and desire.
I know where I want to go, but the river makes it so hard to move sometimes.
So I find myself fighting every day to stay afloat, and to battle against where the default wants to take me, into something ordinary and mundane, trapping me into a life of dullness and drudgery, boredom and banality.
Mistakes made in the past weighing heavily on me, trying to force my future into a futile farce of faked happiness and forced smiles.
For I am scared of where the river wishes to take me, but the only way to change direction, and swim upstream, is to force myself to stand strong against the current.
In standing, each step fighting, forcing my life into a different aspect of the flow, carrying me into different waters, changing the directions at each fork in the river, toward different outcomes, greater possibilities, and a deeper sense of peace.
And while I don’t yet have an exact vision of what it will look like, I cannot help but chase a different future in the present.
Because I know where a failure to change will lead me, and that place fills me full of terror. For I have seen in vision the future that awaits me if I do not become the person who stands against the flow, and that future is full of regret, and bitterness and loss.
The river is an indiscriminate killer of hope, and joy and dreams.
All you can do is stand against the current, and battle it with everything that you’ve got.
Which is why you need to be determined and disciplined in your desires for a different shore to end up on. For each rapid in the river is a chance to improve, each fork a possibility for change, each waterfall a chance to move faster or fall into oblivion, each peaceful waterway a chance to weep or take strength.
Each moment brings the opportunity to fight or to fail.
The longer I spend in this river, allowing it to determine my direction, is to court sadness and loss, hopelessness and fear.
And even though the current is swift, the twists and turns treacherous, and the force of the water strong, I am not without strength, and wisdom, and weapons.
If I wish to heal myself, I have to choose my path in the river, and use everything I have to determine my own path, away from where time and the flow of the world wishes to take me.
For I have seen that trap, and I will not live it.
I choose another way, another path, another mission.
And my choice is my own.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings