Life River Flowing

I was reading "Everyday Tao" again tonight: having opened the book at random I happened upon the entry entitled Flow, which refered to the Chinese character Xing, which was translated as "to march, to walk, pathway, flow, business". In the discussion of the translation, the author talks about the images that come from both the character itself and the meaning of the character. He talks about crossroads, about walking, about movement and I was struck by the contrast between this view, of constant movement, flowing ever onwards with the way that we in the West so often look at our lives.

Take for example the standard CV or curriculum vitae that you send out when you're trying to get a new job. On it you list the basic information about yourself - name, date of birth, address etc.; then you move on to list your educational achievements; then the next list is all the jobs you've had up to now. All of these things have dates against them - they have a start and a finish; there they are, neatly parcelled up. We break up our lives in this document: first we did this, then we did that, then we did the other. Everything is described in a linear way with everything going from A to B in a nice straight line. But life isn't a nice straight line, life is a flowing river.

A flowing river wanders about a bit, doubles back on itself, speeds up and drops down hills and mountains, arrives in a plateau and slows down. A river has eddys, rocks, fallen trees, strong currents below the surface that take us by surprise. A river can overflow due to excessive rainfall, causing disaster in its' wake; a river can dry up when rainfall drops below what is needed.

And I thought, my life has quite definitely been like that river - it's wandered around a bit, in a lazy sort of way, it's speeded up sometimes and dropped me over waterfalls, it's sometimes abandoned me for a time in a long and dreary plateau. As it's flowed I've found a number of rocks, been caught up in fallen trees, been dragged under by unexpected eddys, it has overflowed and caused disasters, dryed up during lack of rain. Despite all this, the river of my life has continued onwards. Eventually it'll reach the sea - but where the coastline is I have no idea nor how far I have to go before I reach it; I'm also sure that my river has quite a number of surprises left in store for me.

What I have to remember is that nature hates straight lines and my river hates them right along with it. Remembering this helps when you look ahead at your goals and suddenly find your river of life going in a great loop around the goals and leaving them behind without ever having touched them at all. We may regret that we passed our goals by, but we can't go back, the river of life won't let us.

The other thing we have to remember, as our river of life takes us onward, is the views that we've seen along the way. Sometimes the scenery has been dramatic - beautiful mountains, lovely sunsets; at other times, it's been calmer as we passed along the wide, flat river valley; on occasions our river has taken us past and through exciting events - wars, death, disaster, great romance, wonderful success and then again it has taken us past events that happen over and over again - our journey to work, repetitive tasks we have to complete. And yet it keeps on moving.

Sometimes as we watch the view, we keep hoping to see those dramatic events; we want a bit of excitement and there's nothing wrong with that, in moderation. But how will we know how to recognise the drama without experiencing the more mundane. The river flows ever onwards, it doesn't take us back to where we started, we cannot do life over again. So enjoy your river of life, even when it does drop you over waterfalls that you weren't expecting, even when it meanders around a wide, flat river valley floor where the scenery is not much to write home about. Be aware of what is happening around you, whilst accepting that you cannot stay.

taoism