It is often said that Life is a Highway. It is a wonderful metaphor. Highways beckon, they exist to be travelled upon, and they lead to locations; places that may be unknown but the traveler has the comfort of knowing others have passed this way before with a purpose to get to a place they had a reason to go The to. On a highway you can stop, sit by the roadside to rest, get your bearings, or even turn around, go back and try another way. As a metaphor for life the Highway is most appropriate to the young. It affirms their power and energy; it challenges them to move forward with purpose, to choose their own road to their own future. It is possible even, if one is bold enough, to make one’s own road and carve out a path in the wilderness, going where no one has gone before.

But as one passes the midpoint in life’s journey, when there is more travel behind than ahead, we may find that life appears not so much a road but a river, a stream that carries the traveler inexorably forward, its current too swift to make headway upstream. Like the highway but even more so, the river endlessly branches; it is a work of nature – not purpose built. Some of the branches lead to places no one would ever want be.

The waters may flow serenely through beautiful lowlands, foam over rocks and rapids, plunge over deadly precipices, or meander through fetid swamps and so the traveler must navigate, steer their vessel towards the branch that gives them the best chance for a happy outcome. But the charts are sketchy; just stories passed down over the generations, while the River is infinite and constantly changing – maybe no one has ever come this way before.

Each of us began our journey down this vast, endless, flowing River at some point not of our choosing and at some place far downstream the River will claim us, again most likely at a place not of our choosing. So it becomes perfectly clear that life is truly about the journey, there is no destination, only a series of scenes going by, places gained and then lost.

The River bends endlessly and sometimes we find the expected but just as likely it will be something unexpected. We learn to keep our hearts ready to be delighted or disappointed; we will inevitably experience plenty of both. We do not control the course of the River, nor its speed, though one can make some difference and the work humankind in the aggregate has changed the character of the landscape we pass through to some extent if not the character of the travelers.

So where is the meaning in this journey? Do we have a readymade excuse for every failure or setback? “The current was too strong, I was swept away.” No, exactly the opposite is the case. What matters are the choices we make to steer our boat towards this branch or that, the skill and courage with which we navigate the inevitable rapids and the humility and contrition we must own if, due to our own failures we find our vessel floundering in the stream.

The wisest and boldest navigator may still come upon a fatal cataract around the next bend of the River; there is no shame in that. Nor is there glory in reaching the shores of the Atlantis if your only guide was dumb luck. It is not where we get, nor is what Fate has in store for us around the bend, whether the the experience be joy or pain, that is meaningful. It is the character of our hearts and heads and the use we make of them that endows those experiences with meaning.

We can seek pleasure to distract and drown out the fear and uncertainty of our River Journey, an opiate that lasts as long as it lasts and departs leaving us empty and stale or with open hearts we can experience happy feelings in the full context of our journey, a taste of Beauty Eternal held for a timeless moment then preserved within even, as we round the next bend where we may find a greyer, colder vista.

And when it is our turn to feel pain, do we rail against a fate that may indeed be undeserved? Do we believe wounds cannot heal or that suffering must be meaningless? Pain if actively embraced rather than merely endured can carve new pathways into the heart, deepening and enlarging our capacity for meaningful experience. Even suffering we bring upon ourselves can be an opening to growth and a new humility leading to wisdom.

The skills needed for river travel may seem full of contradictions, we must cultivate a degree of detachment such that we may come to each bend in the River with a serene heart knowing full well there will be disasters around some of them while at the same time we are exerting all our skill, strength and courage to guide our good ship and the souls within to a safe passage and a secure harbor.