Go with the flow?#56

Hey all, I missed sending this out last Friday. Life got busy, as always.

Today let’s talk about life using the metaphor of a river.

The Lena River

This is the deltas of the Lena River which is in the far east of Russia.

The Lena River is 2,668 mile long, and here we see it split into countless distributaries.

Countless different paths which the water from the river source can take. All before finally reaching the ocean.

Life is like this.

Life starts at the beginning of the deltas, when the water follows a single path. From the point we are born life for each one of us takes a different path.

And the number of paths before us are somewhat infinite, ever winding and splitting into multiple paths time and time again, all before ultimately reaching the ocean. Which for all of us is the completion of life itself, death.

This image itself is a good way of visualising our lives, and one of the processes with governs it.

We will all follow different paths

One of the interesting things to know is that no two people will follow the same path.

There is this story which I am often reminded of…

The alcoholic father of two identical twins. One twin is determined to not follow in his father’s footsteps, but unfortunately the other twin does and becomes an alcoholic.

Here both twins start at the same point in life with the same genetic code, and live the same early life. But they still travel different paths.

It is the equivalent of dropping two identical sticks into the Lena River, and while they follow the same paths for a while, due to the currents, they drift in different directions and eventually move onto different paths, following different distributaries.

Go with the flow

When I ask people about their direction, they often do not know.

Some occasionally say they are just “going with the flow”.

And when I see the actions and behaviours people take towards their own life, I often see very little movement.

Regardless about how much noise they make.

A couple of examples…

• I have a friend who constantly tells me they are unhappy with their current career, and path through life in general. They have been telling me this for over 4 years. 4 years!

• Many people I know complain about their weight, and don’t do anything about it. Some/most have been “dieting” for over 10 years.

• Someone I know only thinks in terms of very short horizons. They took a job, arguably out of necessity but mainly because it was in front of them. They do not enjoy it, they are generally malcontent about the whole thing and do not have any plans to change it.

• Another person - when asked a simple question - “how’s work going?”, they replied “only 15 more years to go and I can retire”.

• And mostly everyone else, they just don’t think about it - they are “going with the flow”.

Back to the Lena River

Life can be a little bit like a river, it flows.

But imagine, you’re on a small boat, starting somewhere towards the source of the river.

Unfortunately the boat you start with is out of your control.

If you’re from a wealthy family, born into a civilised part of the world then your boat would be very different to someone born into poverty.

And the place you start on the river would be different too. Some experiencing a nice calm flow and others thrown into turbulent waters from the start.

Now without interference or power, your boat would flow down the river on its own course, eventually arriving at the sea.

But, because the starting point was different for everyone, and the currents impact everyone’s boat slightly differently, you would exit into the sea at slightly different times and would take slightly different paths.

And even when things are all equal, as the story of the twins above, the journey can still be very different.

So is it all fate?

So when we’re “going with the flow” either deliberately or through lack of action, our journey is in the will of the river currents.

But here is the thing, we can exert some influence over that path.

At a minimum we can rock the boat side to side, we can put our hands in the water and paddle, and if we’re lucky to be gifted a boat with an engine, you could use that.

And if we’re thinking of life as a flowing river, we can not reverse time and go back up the river - but we can try to direct our boat towards different distributaries and affect our journey.

We have some say in our direction.

Example time

When I was 16 life was tough, I didn’t have any direction and my boat was not robust and I only had a small oar. If I’m honest, I had 1 oar and I spent a bunch of time going in circles. And that pissed me off, a lot.

When I was 21 I’d managed to get myself a second oar, and at the time I wasn’t happy with my career so I paddled like crazy to get onto a new part of the river. And it worked, I was now under the influence of a new flow of the river.

And it changed my journey significantly.

Another time was when I did my first masters. I had gotten bored on my current distributary and I didn’t like the idea of continuing along that path. So I saw doing my masters as a way to change that. And it did, and I worked every weekend and evening for 2 years. It added a little 4hp engine to the back of my boat and allowed me to change to another distributary.

Then I got laid off, I was pulled into a turbulent distributary. You could say I had crashed up on shore. I had to repair my boat, and wait for a favourable time to relaunch and continue with my journey.

Right now? Irelands great, but I’m a little bored, so now I’m pointing my boat towards another distributary - one which might (hopefully) see us move to the US.

And the future? Well this is on my mind too. So really the question is - of all the possible distributaries along my current path - which ones do I want to pursue, and can I get my boat over to the entrances of them?

Summary

So my takeaways are this.

Everyone starts with a different boat, understand that and be kind.

You can go with the flow, there is nothing wrong with that.

Or you can effect your course, and have some say in your life.

Regardless of anything, we all end up in the same place.

But wouldn’t our short trip along the river be nicer, more scenic and adventurous if we figured out how to control our little boat a little better?

I think so.

Fin.

Have a good week everyone.

Best

John