The River Flowed into You

The ballad of the child you once were

When you were a child, you stood still and watched the world dance around you. You did not move towards this world, instead the world came to meet you where you stood. You did not step forwards into time, rather time flowed into you and through you, and you ran your fingers through its currents, laughing.

When you were a child, you did not seek and yet you found constantly. You found a shiny rock that you put into your pocket. You found a piece of sea glass that you placed under your pillow. You found a stick unlike any other that you presented to your mother to tell her how special she was. You couldn’t help but be showered by all the treasures that life and nature had to offer. You were royalty, surrounded by riches wherever you went.

When you were a child you didn’t make decisions, there was nothing to choose. And when you did choose it felt like a game that you were bound to win no matter what you picked. Vanilla ice cream or chocolate? The striped dress today or the polka dots? The top bunk or the bottom? Choices weren’t real - they were options by which to express yourself in the moment, nothing more. Choosing did not fundamentally change anything.

When you were young, you lived a single moment of time. Minutes, hours, days, months - these had no meaning. Watching the second hand of a clock tick across its face was like watching a butterfly flit from flower to flower. Time existed forever in the same one instant. You became 3, then you became 4, then 5, then 6…growing up felt like a dress-up costume event. You got to play someone older each time your birthday came around.

When you were a child, you stood knee deep in the river of life and allowed it to flow through you, into you. You did not struggle against its currents. Often the currents brought you wondrous treasures and all you had to do was reach out and pick them up as they floated by. You were grounded and in the river’s flow - never feeling separate from it.

Yet every once in a while, the odd piece of debris scraped your arm causing you to cry, or perhaps, an old tree trunk knocked you off your feet causing you to fall backwards and be swept away by the current for a moment. This startled you and as you got back on your feet, you felt a bit insecure and ashamed.

That is when the voices of other people began to filter in - the voices of your parents, your teachers, your peers and others.

“You mustn’t trust the river!” they said. “You must learn to protect yourself!”

That thought had never even occurred to you. Protect yourself? From what? What was yourself? And what was this river? You had simply assumed the two were inseparable. But now it seemed that they were not the same. This river was something that would overpower you unless you learned to overcome it.

Had you been gullible? Had you been naive, a simpleton, a fool to assume that life and you were one? Your memory of the shock of being knocked off your feet filled you with doubt. The voices of those around you got louder and you began to listen.

“Don’t just stand there allowing the current to come at you! Move forward with will, ambition and discipline! Choose your steps! Don’t just pick up whatever drifts your way - anticipate what is flowing downstream and intercept only those objects that can be of use!” the voices around you admonished.

And so, for the first time you began to move into time. You began to anticipate the current. You began to scan the river for objects and experiences that could be useful. And you began to position yourself in order to intercept them. All sorts of wondrous treasures began passing you by, but you didn’t care. You hardly noticed. Those treasures were useless compared to the objects you wanted.

For you had begun to watch the grownups around you and you noticed none of them were standing knee deep in the stream anymore. They had all built secure rafts made of useful bits of driftwood and other debris. And standing atop these rafts, rowing frantically against the river’s current, they appeared secure and relatively unscathed by the currents of life. When a large dead branch did happen to float their way, they weren’t knocked off their feet. Instead, the branch simply bounced off the platform they were standing on.

And so, you began to redouble your efforts. Because you realized that you needed to get out of this river and separate yourself from it. You began to gather all the objects you needed to build your raft. And the day you finally completed that raft you christened it: “My Life”.

And so, the game became one of using My Life to navigate life. Of protecting My Life from the vicissitudes of life. Of ensuring the well-being of My Life even at the neglect of life. The raft and river became adversaries and your mission became to preserve the raft at all expense.

So began the struggle of mastering the oars. Fighting against the currents of the river that flowed against you was no small feat. But one victory at a time, you learned how to do it. Your focus was ever on the objects and experiences you desired while keeping a wary eye on the ones you wished to avoid and steering your raft well clear of them. You developed strength and endurance rowing your raft against the current in order to reach the experiences you wanted. Sometimes you succeeded, often you failed. Yet, with each failure your resolve grew stronger and you refused to be bested.

There were those around you who admired your raft. For it appeared strong and sturdy and well-travelled. Yet, you were never satisfied for long because you saw other rafts much larger and more powerful than yours. You imagined those people to be free from the whims and sudden surges of the river. You craved to be free like them. To flow upon this river so effortlessly as if it were a dream.

The years flowed past…

And you grew weary. All that energy spent. Your muscles ached from the constant rowing. Your heart felt heavy, faced with the Sisyphian task that had been put to you. Protect the raft. Preserve the raft. Keep My Life safe and secure and moving ever onward.

Then, one day, as you were busy fortifying your raft, the unthinkable happened. A large rotting log carried by the current smashed into your raft. And before you knew it, you were hurled from it and into the the river below.

Your worst nightmare had come true. You gasped and flailed as the rapids carried you as if you were no more than driftwood yourself. You watched in horror as you were thrown between rocks and caught within eddies. You had no control. The river carried you with it and you could only watch.

Eventually, the current slowed and you came to a shallow where you were finally able to find your feet again. And standing up, bruised and beaten, with the river flowing by your knees, raftless - you felt the flow once again.

Something long forgotten stirred within your chest. A memory so faded that were it not for the tingle in your skin, the warmth that had begun to spread across your body and the surge of emotion within your heart, you may have missed it.

Joy.

Like a distant dream remembered.

Joy.

Wafted through your being flooding its darkest recesses.

And as you blinked away the tears that arose causelessly, ceaselessly, a smile spread across your lips, and then your lips parted as you bellowed a guttural cry - half laughter, half anguish.

A cocktail of pent up emotion that simply had no choice but to explode forth as if birthing a new universe from the old.

And the river.

The river enveloped you in its embrace and whispered,

“Welcome back.”

As you were held by the river, you realized a love and a comfort you hadn’t felt in eons. You simply stood, naked, blinking, confused as the first day you were born. And yet, you felt you had lost nothing of value and gained the whole world.

Standing there you watched the river flow through you, into you, once again. You had lost My Life and now there was only life.

It brought you many things again that, in another time, you would have thought of as worthless. And yet, now you saw beauty in them again. The glint of sunlight through the veins of a yellow autumn leaf. The sound of the beating wings of geese setting to flight. Morning dew upon the spider’s web.

Treasures abound everywhere as far as the eyes could see.

You bowed humbled, awed and silenced by the staggering simplicity of it all.

And as tears of gratitude fell from your eyes, they became one with the river.