Life Lessons From a Rebellious River

A Story About Finding My Flow

For a year after moving into our new home, we lived with blank walls. Not in that mindful, Marie Kondo way of intentional simplicity, but in that raw, unfinished way that whispers, "I don't know who I am in this space yet." The emptiness felt like both an accusation and an invitation.

My well-meaning friends offered their solutions, each suggestion carrying the weight of shoulds and supposed tos. Have you tried this? What about that? Their words echoed the voice in my own head – the one that keeps a running tally of all the ways I'm not quite measuring up to some imagined standard of adult competence.

And then, in one of those divine moments of synchronicity that the universe offers when we're finally ready to receive them, I found it while doing some research for a teaching project about communities: a 1944 map of the Mississippi River Basin. Not just any map, but Harold Fisk's masterwork – a visual biography of a river that refused to be contained by a single story.

Sheet 5 (of 15) from the 1944 Map of the Mississippi Meander Belt

I became obsessed with Harold Fisk after that. Late at night, I'd find myself deep in digital archives, reading about this Army Corps of Engineers geologist who saw something no one else had seen before. In 1944, while the world was at war, he was mapping peace – or at least a different kind of battle, one between water and earth that had been raging for millennia.

The deeper I dug, the more I found myself in his story. Here was a man who spent years tracing ancient paths, mapping ghost rivers that had long since changed course. He colored them like ribbons – purple, red, yellow, green – each shade representing a different era of the river's journey. His colleagues probably thought he was going overboard with all those colors, all those meticulous details. But Fisk understood something fundamental: Every path the river had taken mattered. Every twist and turn was part of its story.

In my darker moments, when I felt like I'd taken too many wrong turns in my own life, I'd think about Fisk. About how he might have mapped my path – not as a series of mistakes, but as a collection of colorful ribbons, each one representing a different version of me, all of them equally valid, equally necessary.

Here's the truth I wasn't ready to admit: I fell in love with this map because it told the story I needed to hear. The story of a river that changed its mind a thousand times, that carved new paths when the old ones no longer served, that understood the profound difference between wandering and being lost.

The river became my teacher, and these walls became my classroom. Every morning, I'd stand there, coffee in hand, studying the intricate patterns of a waterway that had the courage to rewrite its own story again and again. And slowly, like water wearing away stone, the river's truth began to reshape my own.

What the River Knows about authenticity

The river knows something about authenticity that took me decades to understand: There is no such thing as the wrong path when you're following your own truth. The Mississippi didn't apologize for its meanders, didn't shame itself for changing course. It simply flowed where it needed to flow, creating beauty in its wake.

I spent years believing that confidence meant knowing exactly where you were going. That success meant following the straightest line between two points. That worthiness meant never having to backtrack or start over. I collected other people's maps like talismans, convinced that if I just followed their routes carefully enough, I'd end up where I was supposed to be.

But the river knows better. It knows that authenticity isn't about perfection – it's about permission. Permission to change direction when the ground beneath you shifts. Permission to carve new channels when the old ones no longer serve. Permission to trust that your path, however wandering it might appear to others, is exactly the path you need to be taking.

I look at the way the river moved across centuries, each curve and bend a testament to its honest response to whatever it encountered. Some might call it indecisive. I call it brave. Because here's what the river understands: Every time you choose truth over expectation, you're creating space for others to do the same. Every time you honor your own current, you're showing others what it looks like to trust their own flow.

What the river knows about vulnerability

Sometimes the banks overflow. Sometimes the water runs low. Both states are necessary, neither state is permanent. In my own life, I'd spent so much time trying to maintain a constant depth, afraid of both the flood and the drought. But the river teaches us that our natural rhythms are trustworthy, even when they're inconvenient.

The river doesn't hide its state of being. It doesn't pretend to be full when it's running dry, doesn't try to contain itself when it's overflowing. It knows something we've forgotten: Our natural cycles of abundance and scarcity, of expansion and contraction, are not problems to be solved. They're patterns to be honored.

I think about all the times I've apologized for being "too much" or "not enough” and about all the times I've tried to regulate my own emotional weather to make others comfortable. The river reminds me that depth isn't about consistency—it's about honesty. Sometimes we're a rushing torrent of emotion, sometimes we're a quiet trickle of contemplation. Both states carry their own gifts, their own wisdom.

And here's the thing about vulnerability that the river understands: It's not about exposure, it's about connection. When the river overflows its banks, it's not failing – it's feeding the soil, creating rich deltas, nurturing everything around it. When it runs low, it's not weak—it's making space for what needs to emerge, revealing hidden treasures, allowing for rest and regeneration.

What the river knows about community

Every twist and turn creates space for life to flourish. The river doesn't question whether it's worthy of supporting an ecosystem; it simply offers what it has, and life responds. How many times have I held back from offering my own gifts, worried they weren't enough?

The river understands something profound about community: It's not about grand gestures or perfect offerings. It's about showing up consistently, exactly as you are, and trusting that your presence matters. The river doesn't wait until it's "ready" to nurture life. It doesn't hold back until it's "qualified" to support others. It simply flows. And that flow creates countless possibilities for connection.

I think about how many times I've questioned my right to take up space in the world. How many times I've dimmed my light or swallowed my words because I wasn't sure they deserved to be heard. The river shows us a different way. It teaches us that our very existence creates ripples of possibility in the lives of others. It’s our willingness to be seen and known that creates safe harbors where others can dock their own fears and dreams.

The river knows that community isn't about perfection – it's about participation. Every eddy and backwater in the river creates a unique ecosystem, a specific kind of sanctuary that supports particular forms of life. In the same way, our quirks and peculiarities, our scars and struggles, create unique spaces where others can find belonging. We don't have to be everything to everyone. We just have to be ourselves, thoroughly and courageously, and trust that this is enough.

The Sacred Art of Becoming

As I spend time tenderly tracing all the lines of this mighty river that can’t seem to make up its mind I realize it is like me, like all of us.

We are all works in progress, constantly eroding old beliefs and depositing new understandings. Our paths aren't meant to be straight lines. They're meant to be honest ones.

Change isn't something that happens to us – it's something that happens through us. Like the river carving new channels through ancient earth, we are always in the process of becoming.

Our wanderings aren't wasted time. Every detour, every apparent mistake, every seemingly wrong turn is part of our story. The river's ancient paths are just as important as its current course – they tell the story of how it became what it is today.

The Courage to Flow

So here I am, still learning from my wall-mounted guru. I’m still figuring out how to trust my own current, how to honor my own rhythms, how to believe that my meandering path is exactly where I need to be.

And those blank walls that once felt like an indictment? They were really just waiting. Waiting for me to find the courage to tell my own story, to honor my own journey, to understand that sometimes the most beautiful thing we can do is simply allow ourselves to flow.

Like the river, we are all eternally unfinished stories. And maybe that's not just okay – maybe that's the whole point. Maybe our power lies not in having it all figured out, but in remaining open to where the current might take us next.

After all, even the mighty Mississippi is still figuring out where it's going. And if that's not a permission slip for the rest of us to embrace our own becoming, I don't know what is.