Near the edge of the San Francisco Bay, just outside the Golden Gate Bridge, the incoming tide from the Pacific Ocean meets the outgoing flow from the Bay. During periods where both incoming and outgoing are competing for real estate, the water churns. Caught in it, you feel like you’re in a washing machine, not in the flow of water but fighting against it. On the one occasion I was in proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge, during an open water swim of the same name, our able guides gave warning to stay inside the bridge to avoid being tossed around. Believe me you, I listened. But in life, we often feel like we are being tossed around.
Water, water everywhere
I owned a Toyota Highlander for a solid 10 years. The color was Waveline Pearl. Unique, slightly blue, slightly lavender. Certainly, I wouldn’t see another vehicle that special color. But you know what? I did. Everywhere. An example of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or, frequency bias. It’s the effect of you notice what you notice. It’s not that Waveline Pearl was suddenly all the rage, it’s simply that it was new to me and noticed more often.
Same with water this week. I begin each day reading a day in Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening. In a recent passage, he spoke of water. Big deal, you might be thinking, but I’m fascinated by water as it is. Having recently moved and finding myself situated lakeside, gazing upon it every chance I have, including this very moment. This passage was what I like to call, a punch in the gut. One that stuck with me and I can’t seem to get away from. Nepo spoke of water, citing that ‘Most things break instead of transform because they resist it…water, accepts whatever is tossed or dropped or placed into it, embracing it completely.’ Dang, I think I fall into the resist camp. I think I can maintain a tight grip rather than going with the flow of water.
Why should we embrace the flow of water?
Its possible water evokes my attention because it is my happy place. Beginning the day enveloped by the water at the pool brings me peace, quiets my mind and relaxes my body. But life…an entirely different story. Life seemingly calls me to chart my own path. I’m the ‘let me do it’ child, the one who does things her own way. Learning, as I get older/smarter that if I look for the currents, they’ll guide me. Showing me how to proceed and avoid the rocks. Or, if not avoid, flow over.
But I still resist. I believe, genuinely, that I can ‘figure out’ a solution to any challenge. Ok, any might be a bit extreme, but many challenges. And 95% of the time, that’s probably true. I noodle my way through it, using my past knowledge to craft the solution. It could be an easy ride, or a rough one, but I get there, I figure it out. Best solution? Maybe yes, maybe no. Yet, if I flowed with the water, letting life unfold before me instead of examining it like one of those ‘fun’ brain challenge puzzles, I would find ease. Embrace the tide.
Instead, I, like so many of us, waste untold amounts of mental energy figuring it out on our own.
Embrace the tide
Since I’ve moved, every moment of every day has been filled with settled. It’s nesting, but out of a sense of control. I’m that person who does not feel internal settled until the space around me is in order. About a month before I moved though, I signed up for a half-day yoga/meditative ‘Pause’ put on by The Loft on Main, a local yoga studio. It was yesterday, about three weeks after the move. Turned out, forced stillness was required to remind me to let go and embrace the tide.
Near the end of our time, our leader, Angie, led us through Lectio Devina, a contemplative practice. The focus was a passage from a speech given by Howard Thurman at Spellman College. Thurman was an educator, philosopher, civil rights leader and theologian. The idea with Lectio Devina is that the passage is read four times, each with a different focus. You take from it what you need as the words wash over you. What stuck with me was, “Will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls? Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Ouch. I’ve been trying to hold the water.
Simply flow
Which is impossible. If you have found a way to hold water with your bare hands, tell me about it, because from where I sit, impossible.
Instead of white knuckling gripping, in the name of ‘figuring it out’ my way through life, what if I considered what strings I was holding? The ones that nagged in the back of my mind to do this and that. Figure it out. Water has been a wise instructor as it washes over me. Flowing. If we simply allow the flow of life without resisting, oh the places it would take us! To the discovery of our genuine self, which remains a recurring theme in this phase of middle life. I don’t know that we ever truly ‘arrive’ because, like water, if we’re not flowing, we’re stagnant.
Maybe allowing the flow of water, or more aptly, the flow of life, to mold and shape us, isn’t difficult at all. The shaping will leave us formed beautifully, precisely as we need to be for the moment. And time, the tide, will take us to all the places we need to be. Be brave my friends. Lisa