The River of Life

Life. It’s such a beautiful thing. It’s a story, in which you don’t get to decide the beginning, but you surely get to decide how you live it. You don’t choose your parents, but you sure as hell choose your friends. Life is a tender thing. There’s a large part of it that’s under our control, and a larger chunk that’s not. As time goes on, our successes and failures, our ups and downs, are what define our life. As someone very aptly said- “Life is like an ECG screen. There’s no life without ups and downs, just like an ECG monitor.”

There are a lot of similarities between life and a river. A river is as gentle and tender as life itself, and has a lot of similarities to it.

A river usually starts off from a glacier, and has no say over which glacier it starts from. It has to flow through multiple terrains, some benevolent and life-giving, others rugged and having no scope of tenderness. This is just like how us humans have to travel to different places, with different environments and under different circumstances.

A river also has numerous rocks, pebbles and other such obstacles in its path. But the undaunted river goes on gently eroding the rock, bit by bit, with a very consistent and pragmatic approach. This teaches us valuable life lessons. We face a myriad of obstacles in our life, and just need to have the courage and patience to overcome them. A river teaches a lot about life… one just has to observe and inculcate it in his/her life. There are certain times when the river comes across a rock too large or too strong to break, and it simply flows around the obstacle, humbly submitting to the greatness of the obstacle. This is something people fail to do most of the time. We fail to understand that the obstacles are not always there for us to showcase our strength, but sometimes exist only to show us another way. To show us the less traveled path.

More often than not, a river contains sediments (also known as silt) while flowing. Depending on the kind of environment it’s flowing through, it either deposits the silt, or picks it up from there. This is a very symbolic and significant process. The silt signifies the knowledge and experience that a particular person always carries with him/her. Depending on the milieu they come across, they either pick up some knowledge or experience from there, or impart their wisdom to the people around.

In its course, a river also comes across several other small streams and tributaries. It either merges with them, or maintains its own flow by maintaining the same course. At times, the river also divides itself to form tributaries, each going in a different direction. This is symbolic of the other people who enter our life in due course of time. We either decide to join them and strengthen our network of friends and associates, or decide to go on our way and not allow others to have a part in our story. Then there come such situations where we have to part ways with people who we have loved and known for long. This is often very painful and emotionally jarring. However, this is a part of our life not under our control. To an extent, we attract and repel people into our lives, but there are several instances when we are powerless.

No matter where a river starts or how it flows, it has to end somewhere. It can be a sea, an ocean or even another river. This is a concept which is true for almost everything. Whatever enters this world, has to go back some day. Death is inevitable. But what is in our control, however, is how we choose to feel about death. We can either mourn a particular person and live our lives in sadness forever, or choose to live with the best memories of him/her and inculcate their goodness in our lives.