Downstream...

     As I sit today, pondering over my past, present, and future, I have yet again called to consciousness the rivers that I have always correlated my life with. I cannot truly recollect the accurate number of times that I have watched as leaves floated listlessly past me, through a riffle, swirled in an eddy, and disappeared around a distant bend in the river. I've never honestly considered, until now, however, the arduous path that may lie before them, of which, each leaf has no knowledge of. Will it be blown astray of it's course by a sudden gust of wind? Will it be forced to veer wildly off track in an unnoticed eddy, into what seems a state of swirling, rushing limbo, only to be returned in time to it's original course? Will it be devoured by an invisible, yet ominous, undertow, dragged hopelessly to depths unknown? Or...will it continue on it's path, unhindered, undaunted by the ever-changing river around it?     Day by day, we face the same possibility of unknown turmoil as we move down the course of the river that is life. Individually, our course on the river will never be the same as that of the people around us, though we are all on the same river. Tomorrow may bring a gentle, everflowing forward momentum, or it may drag, push, pull, or blow us at will into innumerable directions with each having it's own very unique obstacles and outcomes. We know not where the river may push us, nor do we know when, or how rapidly these changes may occur, for we know not what lies downstream of us. What exists, and what will occur, downstream is forever unknown, for we cannot look around each bend that lies in the river. We may have a clear line of sight to each bend, or riffle, or eddy, but beyond that, our view is generally obstructed. The sun may be shining and the winds may be calm, but as we pass the next obstacle in our course, violent winds and storms may arise with an unpredictable burst of fury, changing our current course forever. Perhaps the course will be better than the one we were on. Conversely, the course could send us into yet another obstacle, another less favorable outcome. Until we have each seen where our own personal, unique course leads...until we have seen what is downstream...we do not know what is downstream. In the words of Heraclitus, "Everything flows, nothing stands still, nothing endures but change."     The point I have come to realize, and am attempting to convey, (in my own warped context, of course), is this: Because we can never fully know or understand what lies downstream in the river, all we can ever have certainty of is that all things lie downstream. Where, when, how, why, good, bad...all unknown, but always downstream. The only way to ascertain what lies downstream is to ride the river, accept it's uncertainty, roll with the eddy, allow the wind to move you, for while your course may be unknown, it's outcome will be downstream. Hope this made some sense to someone other than me, if not, it's only interpretation, right?
Thanks for reading!                                                                                                                          -M

New Waters...

Everyone that fishes has their home water, the place that they love to go perhaps because of their successes there, or the aesthetics of the location, or maybe it's because it is the place where they find the most comfort of all the places they visit.  I, myself, have a few of these locations that I seem to frequent repeatedly, where I may go to, day after day, even though they may never be as successful as they have in the past.  Often, afterwards, although I know that I felt very comfortable and content at the time simply because it was a water that I had known, I realize it was not true comfort, simply complacency with the same path I had taken, the same waters I have fished repeatedly. More often than not, this complacency, in turn, negatively affects the successes that we might have found by venturing outside of our comfort zone, by taking a new path and delving into waters that we had not fished.
Finding comfort and becoming complacent is our downfall in many of our life's ventures. We reach a point where we are cozy with the way that our life is going, whether we are successful with it or not. We begin to limit ourselves in the excursions that we take outside of our own little box and into the realm of the unknown. We trade the prospect of adventure, and of new opportunity, for the promise of mundane comfort, of uneventful humdrum. We forget that we are able to see, smell, touch, and experience new things with every new endeavor.  We often decide to give up the chance of exposing ourselves to the extraordinary by accepting the ordinary.  
In the past few months, I have, myself, realized that I had become very complacent to the new life that could exist around me. Much of this was brought on by bad casts that had brought me only failure in the very recent past. I became very comfortable in my day to day life, and began to accept that new things were not going to come my way. Although things were not going my way, and I had many obstacles in the path to finding happiness and success in my life, I accepted the fact that I would just make the slow trudge over and around the obstacles, instead of going through them headlong, and never make a cast outside of my comfortable waters, if you will.  This lackadaisical approach had begun to take it's toll on me, and had begun to wear me down to the point where even the comfortable felt uncomfortable, where peace could not even be found in the most peaceful of my home waters.  
Just this past week, I decided it was time to break out of my recurring path, and make an excursion into waters that were unknown to me. I took a path that led me into a place I had yet experience in my life.  It felt uncomfortable, and awkward. It conflicted with all of the mundane events that I had allowed to edge their way into my life, and pushed me outside my barriers to take a chance with an unknown outcome.  The end result of this little excursion is that I found beauty in the world where before, only ugliness filled my vision. Where dark, indistinct objects once loomed in my path, the horizon suddenly filled with the bright, colorful artistry that I remembered at better times in my life.  The single circular path that I had been walking for months branched, and became a maze of differing directions to choose from, separate paths, that seemed endless, all leading to an unknown, fascinating future.
I guess the message I'm trying to get across here is that, when we take the opportunity to attempt something new, something unknown, it may seem uncomfortable and dangerous to us at first. We may look back repeatedly as we walk away from our home waters, and move on to uncharted, unascertained paths to find new waters, feeling as though perhaps we should turn around and move back to what is known.  Our comforts turn to feelings of inner turmoil, disagreeable gut-wrenching agony at times as we make our way into what may be Shangri-la, or may be the abyss.  The fact of the matter is, however, that we cannot find new waters , new successes, new opportunities without leaving those home waters that we have allowed ourselves to become so accustomed to.  I'll close with this, the fortunes and successes that we seek in our lives cannot be found by looking for them in the unsuccessful misfortunes that we've already found...
Thanks for reading!

-M