Flow

Allegedly, I was having a run. I had planned a trip to Cottesbrooke, again, but there was some hideous traffic issue and I gave up. Instead, a trot down a hill, up a hill, down a hill and up a hill before turning around.

There's a stream in one of the valleys which the estate have made into a ford by adding pebbles. I sat down and watched the water.

Ah! the sound of it! And the glittering light! The sky was such deep blue that looking up, up, up, you could see the infinite expanse of space beyond.

As I sat there, I thought of a life as a river. the flow of it passing through all these stages, passing through places rather than moments, and impacted by what is there in that place (at that time) and also carrying with it something of itself. The dissolved minerals of its source, perhaps. A salmon can sense its own river and so each has something of itself, but that self is in constant change as other dissolved minerals are collected on the way. And I thought of that end, the end of the journey, to the sea, to the sea! Is that death or perhaps enlightenment as the self merges with the ultimate.

So, is there a telos, only the one route for each life to take, though we all end in the same place, the sea, the sea, the merging into the ultimate? Is that the purpose I seek? But haven't I given up the quest for a single purpose, like the sea, the sea?

I lay back on the pebbles, with the sky below me and the earth above holding me there safe from hurtling into the infinite expanse of space beyond, and I reached into the mystery.

Child, you're in pain, from all this pulling and reaching! Let go. Let it go. Your heart is sick of searching. Your body tensing from trying. Be the becoming you are becoming. The flow isn't something you find to follow: it is what draws you along, when you stop trying to swim.