The Unexpected Bend

The kayak spun sideways without warning, flinging me into the icy mountain stream. For a breathless second, the river decided for me — not my plans, not my grip on the paddle, but its own relentless, twisting will. As I surfaced, coughing and shivering, I realized: the river wasn't fighting me. It was just being itself.

We spend much of our lives believing we are steering — careers, relationships, even our own emotions — as if we could dictate where the currents should go. But rivers don’t fight their banks. They adapt. They bend and curve, surrendering to the shape of the land while continuing their journey toward the sea.

Maybe we are meant to live that way too.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term "flow" to describe those magical moments when we lose ourselves in an activity — when action and awareness merge effortlessly. Time dilates. Doubt fades. We become one with what we are doing.

Yet in daily life, we often resist this natural state. We force deadlines, micromanage relationships, cling to identities that no longer fit. Instead of flowing, we dam the river.

Spiritual traditions have long whispered the same wisdom. In Taoism, water is praised for its softness and power, conquering the hardest obstacles not through resistance, but through persistence and grace. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna reminds Arjuna: “Be without attachment, and carry out your duty.” Flow is not passivity; it is active surrender.

A river doesn’t curse the boulder in its path. It doesn’t rage against fallen trees or cracked banks. It curves around them, sometimes carving a new bed altogether.

What if our setbacks were not evidence of failure, but invitations to find a new current? What if heartbreaks, career detours, and personal losses were not signs we were "off-course" — but precisely how the greater flow redirects us to something deeper, something wiser?

Real resilience isn’t about stubbornly pushing through. It’s about sensing when to let go, when to pivot, when to soften and slide into the mystery of what comes next.

Standing knee-deep in that mountain stream, I looked downriver. I couldn’t see where it bent beyond the next grove of pines. And that was okay.

We’re not meant to see the whole journey. We're meant to take the next step, the next stroke, the next breath — trusting that the river knows its way home.

Because it does. It always has.

So do you.