How Do You Choose to Navigate the River of Life?
Everyone gets to choose to swim, flow, float, or sink in the river of life.
More than a decade ago, I decided that I was not going to just let life live me. I had a desire to choose the direction of my life – and what I would do with it.
When I started blogging regularly at the beginning of 2012, my Pathwalking philosophy was born.
Over time it’s evolved. A lot. And though many of the original tenets exist – but have been refined – the philosophy has evolved.
Why? Because evolution is a natural part of life. I evolve. You evolve. The world around us evolves. It doesn’t matter if you believe in Darwinism or not – evolution is a scientific fact.
Evolution is at its core change. And change is the one and only constant in the entire Universe.
In the 10+ years since I began to practice Pathwalking, there have been numerous false starts. I’ve taken a bunch of wrong turns, faced obstacles, detours, and a path that’s frequently been confusing.
Though who I was when I began this process isn’t who I am now – I not only still believe in Pathwalking – but am working out how to spread it in new ways to more people.
Why? Because while this is in no way the One True Way to live life – it is a way that everyone can employ.
That’s because Pathwalking is, at its heart, super easy. It’s simply making active choices and decisions. Choices and decisions are all about how we navigate the river of life
What is the river of life?
Like a river, life ebbs and flows. Sometimes the current is almost nonexistent, sometimes fast, other times there are rocks along the way. It can be slow and meandering or swiftly rushing to a waterfall. And like the water that makes up a river – life flows.
Lots and lots of writers, artists, and philosophers have made references to the river of life. Why? Because the idea of how a river functions is almost a perfect mirror of how life functions.
I recently read Om Swami’s The Big Questions of Life. It moved me – not so much because it offered me something new that I’d never previously considered. But because it resonated with me and reminded me of things I sometimes lose sight of.
One quote that really struck me was this,
“The river of life flows independently of one’s preferences. Whether you flow, float, swim or sink, it’s your personal choice.”
This matches my belief in the 3 ways to live.
- Let life live you (flow, float)
- Curl up in a ball and await death (sink)
- Take life like a bull by the horns for a ride (swim)
And this is why we all get to choose how to navigate the river of life – or not.
Do you flow, float, sink, or swim?
Everyone is cast into the river of life. We all take part in living in one way or another.
To be fair – nobody lives one single way. When I go swimming, I don’t always swim. Sometimes I choose to flow or float.
This is true of life itself. Sometimes we swim, while other times we just go with the flow and/or float along.
And that’s not a bad thing. Because some people, when they swim, do nothing but fight the current and resist the flow.
There are certainly times that’s apropos. Shit happens that we can and should fight and resist. But for the most part that’s because it impedes progress or causes undue hurt and harm to many people (i.e. laws that take away rights or restrict bodily autonomy).
But life is personal. How I choose to live is about me.
That sounds selfish. But it’s not. It’s the reality of choosing my life experience for myself. Pathwalking is about choosing and deciding when to swim versus when to float or flow.
What about sinking? For the most part, sinking in the river is a bad idea. Sinking leads to drowning.
But sometimes we sink into the river to escape a swarm of mosquitos or hornets. We choose to go under and hold our breath expecting to rise back to the surface to swim, float, or flow again.
The lesson here is that it’s all about choice. When we choose and decide we empower ourselves.
Thus empowered, we gain the control we can have over our overall life experiences.
The river of life isn’t a singular path
Lots of rivers flow into one another. And many flow into the sea.
The fact is, no river is wholly singular. Just like no paths we choose are going to be without obstacles, detours, and challenges along the way – this is true of rivers.
While choosing to walk a given path is an apt metaphor for deciding how to live life – swimming is more accurate. Because unlike the road and its solidity, water is a middle state between forms.
Yes, the terrain will change. A road might begin as pavement, become gravel, and end in dirt. But it’s always solid.
Water, however, can utterly transmute its state. Freeze it, and it becomes solid. Heat it, and you can turn it to vapor. Life, likewise, can shift and change due to influences not so different from temperature and equally outside our direct control.
Here’s the other wonderful thing about the river of life as a path. Rather than a creation like a road – rivers are naturally occurring. As Om Swami says in The Big Questions of Life,
“The moment we start seeing life as something we flow with as opposed to something we have to make, our perspective changes naturally. Unnecessary struggle takes a back seat and you become increasingly aware of where you need to surrender versus when you ought to take charge.”
We can choose how we live our lives all the time.
I continue to share my Pathwalking philosophy. But the reality of any paths we choose is that they – like the river of life – flow like water. And we can float, flow, swim, or sink – depending on what we choose and decide.
But there is one last, important thing to remember here.
You can only choose how to navigate your personal river
No matter how much we might desire to – we cannot make anyone else choose to navigate their river of life.
Consciousness creates reality. That’s true. But that applies to only you. I cannot consciously create your reality just as you can’t consciously create mine.
One of the biggest issues in our society today is how people try again and again to control the flow of others’ lives.
It doesn’t work. And that’s because the only life you can make choices and decisions for is yours.
But when we realize this truth – we become empowered. And thus empowered, we get to choose how to navigate the river of life that we are experiencing.
When we let go of trying to direct the paths of others – and focus on our own – it’s not selfish. This is a matter of self-care. Because the only one in my head – who knows what I desire for life – is me. And that’s true for you, too.
It all comes down to choices and decisions – and if you are active in making them or passive.
We’re all in a river of life. We’re all capable of choosing to float, flow, swim, or sink at will at any time.
And that is a beautiful, amazing reality.
How do you choose to navigate your river of life?
This is the five-hundred and fifty-seventh exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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