Crossing Rivers

The best thing to do is stare it in the face and move on. We have to face our fears and plow through. I think taking chances takes a lot more courage than staying stagnant and doing what’s safe and comfortable.

Terri Clark

Rivers suggests water in motion. It is the very idea that many in life support today. In order for life to be meaningful we should always be in a state of motion. Stagnant water never produces anything good. Therefore, rivers can be viewed as representing progress or advancement; if we decide to stop when things start getting interesting in life, then we will never know what could have been.

Generally we are told that rivers begin as a stream, then they are fed water from varying sources, but that is not the end of their development. No, they then meet up other little streams rolling downing the mountain after they have journeyed along the little and big cracks and folds along the way that cause them to twist and turn. They may have been tired at some points but they progressed; they get larger and larger until they can be called a river. There are therefore different elements that have to be added for that bubbling spring to become a river.

So too for us, there are many experiences and many kinds of people with varying perspectives who help us to be a unique river. Along the way that bright cheerful sparkling water may lose some of its spunk and swiftness as it get’s bigger and wider; but it knows if it stops flowing it will never know the terrifying joy of conquering within its water all manner of obstacles that threatens its life force. It wears at the banks and cuts down seemingly insurmountable rocks. However, it can also be undermined if it does not become strong enough. They can dry up when the harshness of life brings droughts that have no mercy and which never consider its humble beginnings. They have to fight against all the elements that work hard for their demise to ultimately reach their destination,their destiny, their delta, their change. Many may view the river as it transitions from its delta to be no more. But if you step back from that period of change you realize that aspects to it have been left behind to join what has gone ahead. A continuous flow. The one ahead absorbed into something greater, is not lost but becomes a part of something more meaningful than itself. It does not die it only evolves; becoming a part of something more profound.

So too like a river, we should never stop no matter what. We need to fight and conquer the turbulent times in order to experience the peace and calm before we are transformed which is our destiny.