Lesson 41: Flow

This past year has been the best year of my life. I loved being 40. It was the container for many lifelong desires to come true and dreams lived out. In one year, I saw my world find an equilibrium I'd only heard rumors about. It has been an incredible 365 days.

Last year in my 40 Lessons For 40 Years blogs series, I talked about how I'd learned to sit still during the pandemic for the first time in my life.

Sitting still is a state of mind more than an activity. It is a journey more than a location. It is a mindset more than a destination.  It is something I had to fight to find and something I know I will have to fight to keep. But now that I know what it is and what it feels like, I know I can always come back. (Lesson 39/40)

I talked about how it was in sitting still that I had started to have my own ideas and visions of change for myself and the world and not be dependent on anyone else's to guide my path.

I think I may have found my voice and found an idea that is uniquely my own. I think I may have found something that will once and for all squash the old script that I am not an ideas guy and I am only meant to be "a professional number two." (Lesson 40/40)

But it was this year, that I learned that I was not sitting still after all. I was learning to sit in a posture of stillness and rest WHILE in motion of the flowing river called life. My previous understanding of sitting still was a monk on the top of a hill. Stillness was a yoga pose held for hours. Stillness was zero movement. But this year I learned that that is possible to achieve while in the midst of movement and progression from one point to another. You can find stillness and be in the flow of life and moving incredibly fast.

This quote was shared with me by Caleb Campbell this year:

Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it. - Richard Rohr

That is exactly the kind of activity I'd been doing for so long. I believed that nothing would move in life if I didn't push it if I didn't force it to flow. But this is the year of realization that if you are in the right position, a position of stillness and buoyancy, you're journey in life will flow in a way and at a speed you could never achieve if you were trying to paddle and swim and control the water.

Do you need to be attentive and make sure you're not headed for rocks or being diverted at a fork in the river? Yes. Do you need to be present and ensure that your movement isn't at the cost of others in the river? 100%.   But can you achieve so much more from this posture of stillness in the slipstream of flow? Absolutely.

So as I head to 42, I am moving faster than I was a year ago. And instead of that speed coming from how hard I am paddling and all the effort I've been exerting, it is coming from all the lightness and buoyancy that comes with trust and confidence that my ability to navigate what comes next is a strength only found in stillness amidst the river of life.