No insisting, no resisting.

Have you every asked yourself: how many green smoothies, mile-long runs, midnight meditations, asanas, how many licks of the wellness lollipop until I’m completely cured of the human experience (e.g. bouts of sadness, irritability, disgust, exhaustion, cravings, etc).

To the one on a “wellness” journey, why is it that we start to believe that we must rush towards “realization” or “perfection” or “ultimate-ness” or “purity”? Why is it that we must fix ourselves and expedite our process of “getting better” in order to become magically more of what we adore about ourselves and/or less of what we dislike about ourselves. Do you find yourself thinking that “if I could just hurry up and be perfect, life would finally show me balance and I will finally manifest everything perfectly.”

I’ve been “guilty” of this too.

I have learned that while it may be good and even necessary to jump start our process with some level of deep enthusiasm or commitment, it’s important to ask ourselves: where does my enthusiasm end and my impatience begin? Or am I practicing intolerance of my lesser qualities? Or am I misperceiving myself?

Then, I come back to nature. If we live like rivers, we notice that there is a time for stillness, a sort of “lounging around”, trickling, and then there’s a time for strong, gushing, juicy overflow. The river lives in its seasons and respects its fullness and its emptiness. Rivers provide nutrients to so much Life and also take time to be replenished. Rivers naturally do not rush yet they never wait, never hold back. And you’ll never find a river hesitating. The clarity and confidence of a river reminds me that of the power of trusting the process. There’s no need to overintellectualize because the river trusts where its going.

Respecting my journey means not resenting or being disgusted where I am in life. That type of respect for process must also extend to my partner, my friends, and even people I may not like.

Reflection: Is it possible for me to respect the season that their in? Is it possible to be a witness to how their river is flowing? Is it possible to imagine that just maybe other people could use grace, patience, lightheartedness as they work through their particular stage of being a human?

What season are you in? It might begin to feel easier to respect the messy flow others are in once we sit, realize, and appreciate the fact that we are all just like the river- natural, wild, ebbing and flowing, cleansing and repairing, moisturizing and being replenished, always in need of a little movement.

Now, can we live, allow, trust like the river do?