“If we can soften our hearts and we can access the pure and simple aspect of our nature, then we can regain the realization that everything we need is already inside us and anything is attainable.” -Yehuda Berg

As challenges present themselves in our lives, we often react by stiffening.  We stiffen our bodies, we stiffen our ‘resolve’, we hold our breath, we get rigid.  Hardening isn’t good for our arteries, our joints, or our souls.  Hardening is actually the worst thing you can do in a car accident.  More whiplash results when the driver knows the collision is about to occur and stiffens.  When blindsided, if the body is still relaxed, you might not walk away injury-free, but odds are better than if you saw it coming.

When we harden, we are cutting off the flow.  Wisdom comes to us most easily when we are in the flow.  I know historically that fear of failure caused me to harden.  When I couldn’t complete the backward somersault on the balance beam at age 8, and was humiliated, I decided that trying new things was scary.  When I wasn’t sure I could get into Tufts University, I chose not to apply rather than fear rejection.  When I didn’t know what job to take after college, when there weren’t a lot of jobs available, I settled for a life-sucking corporate job in a cubicle for safety.

The truth is, the challenges are here to nudge us back into the flow.  Too many of us instead stiffen up and back away from the water’s edge.  It’s not always an easy journey on the river of life, but in the water we are soft.  We allow.

We need water.  We need the river.  The river IS life.  If we keep hardening with every new challenge, we get brittle.  We all know people who live like this.  You don’t have to.  Trust that the flow of life’s water is meant to keep you soft so that you may be carried to the experiences intended for you.

Flowing with life on the river,

Erin