Rivers & Roads

Nov 26, 2023
6 min read

What I Love Most about Rivers is that You can't Step in the Same River Twice!

Rivers and Roads by the Head and the Heart is my favorite song. Ever. And without fail, every time I listen to it, it changes meaning. The song seems to grow with me as I have grown up. I discovered it when I was a freshman in high school and all the girls I had looked up to for years were graduating and moving on to the next phases of their lives. Even though there were only three years older than I was, they seemed to have it all together. They were beautiful and smart and witty and going off to all of these cool colleges and I couldn't wait to be just like them! They had this fearlessness about them, this ease with which they moved about the world. I wanted that, I envied that. One afternoon the September of my freshman year, one girl posted a video called "til I reach you" which was a video of all of her friends, a collection of clips she had gathered throughout the course of her high school years with Rivers and Roads playing in the background. This video made me profoundly excited and overwhelmingly sad at the same time. As much as I wish I was, I am not someone who is easily adaptable when it comes to change. I have trouble saying bye to the places and the people I call home, and no matter how many times I do it, it still breaks my heart every time.

I am a member of a small group at my university called "Ignite" which meets once a week to talk about friendships, faith, and family. This group has become one of my homes here on campus, and I can't imagine my life without these people. I attended a retreat a few weekends ago called "Search" with many of these lovely humans, and I was reminded how profoundly loved I am. I was talking in a small group when I remembered one of my good friends who graduated this past May. In our final meeting of the year last year, all of the seniors were asked to share some parting words of wisdom, and that was when my sweet friend shared a sentiment which has remained with me since then: "it will happen again." I remember the night before my eighth grade graduation and being so stressed because my best friend was going to a different high school and I wouldn't see her everyday. Even though our high schools were just a half an hour apart, it felt like the end of the world. But then I learned to love high school and all of the weirdos who brought so much joy to my life! And then came time for us all to apply to college, and all of my best friends were going to be quite literally across the country this time. I was so scared of starting over with all new people in a totally new place, and I was going to miss the people who had made me into the person that I am. But then I came to college, and I was met with the sweetest souls I have ever encountered.

It will happen again. The love that you feel in the people and places you call home will find its way back to you when you least expect it. Loving is hard, it's messy and it's muddy and still we are thankful for being met there, exactly as we are. And the thing with love is that you have to give it away in order to keep it, and you have to let go in order to hold on. It's a paradox in and of itself. You can't step in the same river twice because the water keeps on flowing, life keeps on going. And no, it won't happen again exactly as you remember it, but that's not the point. The good stuff happens in the journey, not the destination. We feel so unqualified as we transition into the next phases of our lives and then we trust and close our eyes and then one say we open them and we're doing it! Just when you feel confused and like you're flailing aimlessly, you get a reminding and loving slap-in-the-face realization moment and you get to laugh at your shortsightedness. That's life. And sooner or later, you are loving all the time and you don't even realize that you're doing it! You're doing it!

Close your eyes and breathe deeply for five seconds. Did you do it? No you didn't! Try again. Breathe. And when you open your eyes, take in your surroundings. Remember a time when you didn't think you would get to where you are now. You are here! You made it! You're doing it! The river of life is fascinating because it changes in an instant. Turns on a dime. One second you're stuck miserably in the valley and the next you're shouting your joy from the mountaintops. When we get so caught up in the pressures and the stresses and who we feel like we have to be, we are missing out on our moment! You've survived every day that you thought you wouldn't. Stop, and celebrate that!

We had some time for quiet reflection this weekend on retreat. To be honest, I usually hate this time because I am either jumpy and anticipating what is coming next or frustrated with myself for not having some sort of epiphany that magically comes to me during this time. So instead, I sat on the grass and closed my eyes and let myself feel whatever it was that I needed to feel. Our brains and their ability to remember things has always amazed me. When I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face, I was transported back to being in first grade and doing the same thing every afternoon while I waited for my mom to come pick me up. Life was so simple, and yet all I wanted to do was grow up! I think of first grade Gracie and how proud she would be of the woman I am becoming. She would love my sundresses and my blog and that I live in sunny San Diego, but more than anything, she would love my laughter! She would love how I feel my feelings, and she would love how excited I get about the little things. All this to say that little you would be so incredibly proud of the person you've grown up to be today!

My favorite line to this song is "rivers 'til I reach you." I always thought this line would represent my relationships with friends, family, and soulmates. I used to think I was waiting to reach someone else to feel like I was fulfilled, but maybe I was just waiting to find myself. Maybe I've just been waiting to reach genuine happiness all my own all along. I saw a quote recently which read "the stars would be so proud to know their atoms created someone like you."

There is a fundamental reason we look at the sky with wonder and longing- for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean or admiring the ebbs and flows of a seemingly endless river. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmon knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins- their home in the oceanic depths and the ever-evolving streams. But if the seas and the rivers are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens... The spectacular truth is (and this is something that your DNA has known all along) the very atoms of your body-the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, and on and on- were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under the starry mountain skies, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are all star stuff. Keep looking up.