Rivers

Sometimes I feel like a river, traveling to join again with the sea, but along the way there is so much. I pass through a desert, and I want to share so that the desert may grow green and bloom, but I can affect only a little of it and only for a little while.

I pass over the rocky cliffs of the problems of those I love. I feel their pain, but I can’t smooth the way. The pain is not mine, nor does it ultimately matter but, still it hurts, not being able to make their way a little easier with the knowledge that this too will pass.

Sometimes, I become a very shallow river and fear that I may dry up and never make it home. Those times, I need to withdraw within my banks and remember that the floods will come again. This life goes on until it is over, just as the river goes on until it joins another, then on again, growing, learning and searching for it’s ultimate self.

The events along the course of the river all serve to change, refine and purify it. As such, they are only temporary and should be accepted with tranquility.

The problems arise when the river wants to share its destiny with those it meets along the way. There are few traveling in the same direction and rivers seldom travel with other rivers.
There is great peace in accepting your course, trying to nurture those you touch along the way. But there is also great frustration in not being able to share that peace with others. My course may change, I may grow wider, narrower, deeper, or shallower, but always I am still a river traveling to the next stage of development.