– Rainer Maria Rilke
I wonder if the river suffers and rails at the endless little river dramas that are constantly mucking up its otherwise peaceful journey. Does the river wonder when fish will stop dying, or when beavers will stop building dams and disturbing its flow? Of course, for all of that to stop, the river would have to no longer be a river; it would have to be just a dry river bed, perhaps at peace but no longer teeming with life. Messiness is life itself: it is the muckiness – the births and deaths, starts and stops, dramas and dams and damns! and droughts and floods – that mean we are alive. We think we want nothing but perfect ease and endless clarity, but it is all the messy stuff that we’re really here for. If you’re sad, mad, exhausted, overwhelmed or just plain fed up, remember the river and that we all have just one job: to keep flowing with or around whatever falls into our experience.