You’re going on a canoe trip during a well-deserved vacation.  You’ve parked your car at the canoe livery, rented a canoe, and began heading down.  As you approach the river, you admire the fresh air.  You scope out the starting point in the river, observing how wide the river is, the colors, and then the greenery around caught your eye.  You started to look at the plants, and the trees, and then the sky.  You appreciated the great weather, and the time off from work or responsibilities to be where you were.  Then, you start thinking about how long the canoe trip will be, what you will go eat afterwards, if you will be able to cross a few other items off of your vacation list before the day is over.

Your kids are excited to go too, but they just as easily could go play in a park, or an arcade.  It doesn’t quite matter as much to them.  You want them to have this new experience not only for themselves, but to bond with you as well, so you make sure you drill home how great this will be.  Then, you all get in the canoe, and begin to paddle.

You point out some scenic campgrounds, how in the distance the rocky side of a mountain looked like a face, and some neatly colored fish could be seen when the sun glimmered through the water.  Your kids soaked that in.  Then they said, “are we almost done now?  We want to go get ice cream!”  You’re about 20 minutes into a 2-hour ride.  You tell them that once the ride is over, you’ll all get some ice cream.  This is an open, relaxing time doing something they’ve never done before.  Can’t they appreciate it a little more?  As you stew over that for quite some time, you pass an area with a lone standing tree branch near the middle of the river.  That stick must be planted in the mud below...it’s a pretty strong branch to be stuck in that position in the middle of a river!  Just as you finished that thought, the stick snapped, and floated on down the river.  

Further down, you come to a fork in the river.  You don’t remember being told about a fork, but the map shows it.  The right side of the fork on the map appears to have more length and twists, and you remembered your kids requesting ice cream, so you start to prepare yourself to cut the ride shorter than you wanted.  You decide to take the left stream.  A red canoe with others in behind you took the right stream, and you took mental note.  Not too far into this direction, an entire tree uproots on the bank and falls into the river, blocking your path almost entirely - there is only enough room on the right bank for half the canoe to fit through.  You have a sense of mind to pull off to the side to assess, so you paddle over and grab hold of the bank.  Your kids are now irritated.  “What do we do now?  We want to get ice cream!  Can we just go back to the beginning where the car is?  I’m tired of being out here!”  You try to temper your frustration, and part of you actually starts to contemplate paddling back to the beginning at this point.  Sanity fights back and informs you that you stand no chance of getting back there paddling upstream.  You tell your kids, “our only option here, if we don’t want to be stuck here all day, is to move what we can of the tip of this tree and squeeze through.  Then, we will finish the trip, and get our ice cream.”  Luckily, it was only the tips of branches that needed moved, along with some pulling of the canoe, but you got around it and was on your way.  The kids were exhausted, but thrilled.

Eventually, you got to the end of the trip, and pulled in your canoe to the transportation vehicle.  The people in the red canoe were already in the van waiting to be transported.  I wonder if we hadn’t been held up by the fallen tree, would we have finished the trip first?  Should I really just have taken the right stream, even though it looked longer and the kids wanted to be done?  You and the kids got in the van, rode back to the car, and headed out for ice cream.  The kids passed out in the car along the way, but you didn’t want to break your word, so you made sure you stopped at the creamery.  You gently woke them up, and when they realized where they were, the last couple hours of misery disappeared.  You got the ice cream, sat out on a picnic table, and observed them eating it.  As you watched, a warm sensation came over you, rippling through your body.  You felt love and joy.  Then, you began seeing them at even a deeper level.  You saw the innocence in their faces, their true satisfaction of enjoying something they love.  You saw their unfiltered laughter and playfulness.  You saw their radiating souls at peace.

The warm ripple effect within you brought about more reflection on the day.  You were reminded of the ripples in the water, and visualized the river at the starting point again, only this time, you saw the strong current flowing downstream.  There was a bold, steady flow.  It was beautiful.  It felt like life, just flowing on.  You heard the water and it’s constant bubbling, waving, crashing sounds, but never stopping.  Not in sound, not in flow.  This revelation held you as a prisoner for a moment, because you realized that you had actually taken in this beautiful depth of existence, even in its happening, but did not allow yourself to truly see it at the time.  You also realized that you spent the beginning of the canoe trip thinking about what you were going to do after it was over, as well as several other pieces of information, all of which had nothing to do with the present.  Then, as if your bail was posted, you were let out of the cell, and your mind wanted to explore the rest of the trip in the same detail.  What else did I not allow myself to consciously see or feel?  What else did I miss when not being present?  I saw the campgrounds, the rock faces, the fish...but there’s so much else!

In an instant, you mentally float to the lone standing stick in the river.  As you are now looking deeper, you notice the stick isn’t going anywhere.  The resistance, by virtue of being stuck into the ground, left it in a stalemate.  Sooner or later, the stick was going to dislodge, and was going to be carried downstream.  Unfortunately for the stick, it was stuck so firmly that the only recourse was for it to break when the river’s current overpowered it.  Wisely, you also note that the water isn’t stopping when it runs into the stick.  It is simply taking another path, and flowing on.

Taking another path and flowing on.  The fork in the river!  The river didn’t let the stick nor the fork get in its way of flowing on.  What about the fallen tree, though?  The tree was resistance too, but the water went through anyways.  I knew I couldn’t go upstream, so I did what I had to for us to keep flowing.  What about the right stream though?  Who knows how long it would have taken through the right stream, or if a tree had fallen there too.  Maybe there would have been a beautiful sight to see on that side that is unseen from the left stream.  The people in the red canoe ended up being done faster, but they didn’t get to experience a tree falling and finding out how to get past it.  More importantly, we were going to get to the same ending spot.  I shouldn’t have placed so much pressure on getting the trip done faster.  That thinking led to being held up longer...I was purposefully slowed down as a result, and forced to contemplate all of this.  Maybe that was the point...

There is a flow of life, and the Universe provides it.  It does not stop, and it takes us to where we need to go.  That is not always where we want to go.  Sometimes we resist, for whatever reasons, and create unnecessary obstacles in our journey.  When this is done, the Universe will remind us that going back upstream is not an option...that the universal flow is for our greater good, and it will always prevail.  Upon human resistance, the Universe will take increasingly higher steps to guide us in our journey, and if we still resist, it will crash us into a tree or a wall at a high speed.  We will think we were wronged by the Universe, but if we only took the time to be open-minded, we would see that we were resisting expansion.  Further, there is beauty in those lessons themselves that enriches the journey.  We can use the flow to guide us, and we can use the universal reaction to our resistances to learn more about ourselves and in which ways we need growth.  

We get caught up in day-to-day routines, not being present in the moment, and not appreciating each step of the journey we are on.  So many times we feel lost, feel that things are going horribly wrong, and just want them to end.  These are the times where we benefit from trusting in the Universe and its flow.  Being in the flow does not mean there will never be negative experiences...that is the contrast of life.  However, those experiences help guide us to what we do want, and where we need to go...even if it isn’t what we thought we wanted.  There are always paths.  Further, being present in the moment allows us to truly take in the experiences, and to be open to the flow as it is happening.  

Don’t miss the journey because you’re thinking about the destination.  Don’t worry about a faster route.  Don’t get attached to a specific outcome.  What’s meant to be, will be, no matter how it happens.

The Rolling Stones were on to something...

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you might find
You get what you need