What we have been taught about ourselves and the world around us conspires to have us believe that living requires tremendous amounts of energy & that it is a great struggle.

Do any of the following sound familiar? "No pain no gain" " life is a constant struggle" " you have to take the bad with the good" " you never really get what you want" "you're unlovable" "something is wrong with you" (altho nothing is ever identifiable) "there is no justice in this world" "no one cares"

These phrases become mantras, we hear them once or many times & how many times do we repeat them to ourselves? They colour our vision, and send us searching..... for what? what have we become? Victims of our own thoughts & beliefs?
Our vision is a life full of all of the above, struggles & pain.... life becomes a self fullfilling prophecy.

Suppose we set aside the rigid concepts of "lifes struggles" that we have learned & begin to entertain the possibility that there is another view of existence. We need to take away the logical, linear view of existence with fixed points & hard facts & consider a metaphor which reveals the ever changing nature of our world.

We swim in a river of life. We can never put our foot into the river in the same place twice. In every second, the water beneath us changes. Likewise, in every second the foot that we put into the river fills with new blood. Instead of celebrating the motion, we try to hold onto the roots and stumps at the bottom of the river as if letting go & flowing with it would be dangerous. In effect we try to freeze frame life in still pictures, but the river is not fixed and neither are we...........

Although we can see continuity - seasons come & go, flowers bloom, trees get taller, people get older - we can acknowledge that with each unfolding moment, nevertheless, presents a world different from that of the last moment.
We could say that the world is born anew in every second. This is an amazing opportunity for change.

We can stop acting as if our opinions and perspectives have been carved in stone & begin to become more fluid, more open & more changeable.
We are in the river....
We are the river....