It's often natural and intuitive to think of your life as a road, stretching out before you to the horizon with bumps and turns and landscapes unique to you. All you have to do is keep heading in that one right direction and you'll get to where you want to go.

The problem is, life isn't a road. Roads are static. On a clear day, you can see miles and miles down a road to some landmark that you'll arrive to an hour later. Or two hours later. Or whenever you get there. It'll be there, waiting.

Most things in life aren't like this. We may believe that by the time we're 40 we'll be married and own a house, and we may have an idea of where that house is, what it looks like, how big it is, and no doubt we have all kinds of ideas about what our spouse will be like. We look down the road, think we see it, and believe that all we have to do is stay on the road and we'll get there.

But life isn't like that. It's very possible that neither marriage nor homeownership lies in our future. It's possible we could live in an urban loft or a farm house or a houseboat or an RV. We could travel the world, living out of a backpack, or we could move to Spain. And relationship-wise, by the time we're 40, we may be still-single, twice-divorced, or part of a polygamous commune.

Before you protest, think back to the days of your righteous youth when you said something like, "I'll never work behind a desk," or "I'll never drive a Japanese car," or "Date a Republican? Over my dead body!"

We are learning, evolving beings, and we change our minds about who we are and what we want all the time. And that's good! And, it means there's really no way to know what the future us will decide to be or do or have.

There are a few goals, very few, such as getting a college degree, that seem pretty static and sometimes actually work out such that you just keep going in one direction and eventually, you arrive. Or, a semester before graduation, they may add five more classes you need to take. Or, you may change your major (shocking, but it happens) and graduate from a completely different program. Or, you may get the job offer of your dreams and postpone finishing the degree (shocking, but it happens).

All this to say, unlike roads and the maps we create to represent them, life isn't static. There are events in motion that parallel your journey and completely change the landscape as you go. Your goal could be destroyed, changed, or irrelevant before you reach it.

Life is actually a river, not a road. And you're a natural swimmer.

Standing on a riverbank, you can make a plan to get to some point on the other side by getting in the water and swimming straight toward it. But try as you might, you may not get there. The current may carry you downriver. Some debris may smack you upside the head and knock you off course. Or, once you get into the water and go a little ways, you may be able to see another destination that you'd like to go for. Likewise, the river may bring you a speedboat so you can charge straight toward your goal with little impediment.

This is how life usually goes. You were going to make partner within a few years, but then the baby came and you moved to the suburbs instead. You were going to spend a year seeing the world before settling down, but then your girlfriend got a job offer in Chicago. You were going to make a documentary about frogs, but then you got hired to direct an action film.

Things happen, good and not-so-good, and your course changes. Before long, you almost forget what you originally wanted, and rightly so! No need to hang onto outdated goals, particularly since they're usually only good for one thing -- beating yourself up for not reaching them, an approach I categorically discourage.

There's a saying that life is what happens to us while we're making other plans. Those plans are the road maps in our heads. We drew them based on all we knew as of some moment in the past. They generally don't apply too well to this moment, because life is a river, not a road. Burying our noses in maps may make us feel better, like we're doing something, but it really doesn't help us much.

Life is always flowing and changing, and for your plans to stand a chance of working out, you need to take this into account. This can seem scary when you're used to the nice firm concept of a road, but where would you rather spend a sunny day with a beach ball and an inner tube -- the middle of a road, or the middle of a river?

Rivers are much more fun, once you can let go of the map and learn to navigate. See if any of this sounds true about the river of life as you know it.

(Warning: I'm going to take this metaphor to extremes & have some fun with it.)

Some sections of the river are full of white water and rapids: fast-paced, exciting, exhausting, and even dangerous. Other sections are gentle and slow-moving, and the floating along is the best part. Some parts are warm, some are cold.

Some people are treading water, others are swimming, a few have nice boats. Then there are those who are standing on the banks, clinging to trees, too afraid to get in, watching everyone else pass them by.

Some are swimming with dolphins, others with sharks. Some are fighting the current, others are going with it. Many feel lost and unsure of what to do, so they just do what everyone else is doing.

Some people are drowning, and drowning people are no joke. Any lifeguard will tell you that unless you're careful, someone who's drowning will pull you under along with them. If you want to save a drowning person, throw them a life ring, and then depending on how they do with that, decide what's next. If they don't want your help, you can't help them. You have to let them sort it out. It's between them and the river.

Some of those drowning people are going under because of heavy bricks they're holding, like addictions, toxic relationships, or self-defeating belief systems. Again, unless they are willing to let go of those bricks, your life ring can't make much difference. In fact, if they're able to stay afloat while clutching those bricks, they'll never sink low enough to realize they need to let go.

Meanwhile, here you are, in the big, beautiful river of life. It's harder to get your bearings on a river than a road, and so many more options of where to go and what to do. There are 360 degrees of possibility!

Luckily, deep within each of us lies the perfect instrument to help us chart our course, something that makes it easy to be in harmony with the river and make it our playground!

That perfect instrument is our Inner Compass.

By Karen Romine Comments(0) 2008-05-16 00:30:02