In the waters I've fished in my life, I've often come across places where tributaries flow into streams, streams into creeks, and creeks into rivers. The technical term for these places where flowing waters meet is “confluences”. Whenever I come across these gathering waters, many times I've sat and pondered which way to go. More often than not, I choose to stick to the main streams, in waters I've fished before, that are familiar to me, where I know what to expect. Occasionally, however, I choose to take the path of the tributary, the unfamiliar direction that leads me to things unknown, waters unfamiliar.
At times, I end up finding success by straying from the beaten path. Other times, I follow the tributaries until I can follow no more, ending in a small trickle that holds no promise. When the latter occurs, I usually turn around, walk back the path I've taken, head back to the confluence and put myself back on the main path.
At a point not long ago, as I walked back from one of these unsuccessful ventures on a relatively unknown stream, I came to the realization of the similarity of the confluences in the stream to the times in my life when I was unsure which path to take and had to make difficult decisions about which direction to go. Should I have chosen the familiar, often traveled streams and continue on a comfortable path, following the direction of so many before me, or should I have chosen the path that would lead me to unknown territory, where nothing was sure except that I'd end up walking where I had not walked before?
The realization of this similarity was shortly followed by the epiphany of the alterity of the two. In choosing a stream, if the decision proves abortive, there is always the possibility of turning around, going back to the confluence, and choosing the opposite path. In life, the path we choose is the one we must stick with. Sure, we will come to further confluences, where our path can be altered, and may lead us in time to more fruitful streams, but the reality is also that although the direction may vary, it is still simply a feeder of the same tributary, that eventually always derives from the choice we made at the confluence.
This reality seemed very daunting to me at first, and for an instant, made me wish it had not occurred to me. When I reached the confluence, I sat and thought in earnest about this for some time. I perched on a rock, looking into the stream I was on, as though it would provide some consolation to me in my state of mental entanglement about the situation. Lo and behold, it did. The stream always flows the same direction, constantly moving, never reversing it's path. The water that flows through at one second is replaced in the next by new water. It's constitution is always the same, but it's position is constantly changing. The water that flows by one point shall never again see that same point. The short memory that the river has of the water that just passed by is displaced by the waters that have yet to come. At the confluences of life, whichever path we might choose to take, we may only move in a single direction. The choice we made at the confluence and the waters we have traveled disappear behind us in the mists of our memory, and the promise of what new waters may bring is where our hopes shall lie.
-M
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