Life is the River, Choice is the Rudder

Welcome back to another edition of Random Walk Theory. Glad that you have made it this far into the journey. It’s officially been a month since this blog started and I would like to take this time to say thank you to all the readers who have left comments, reached out to me and everyone else who’s simply just taken time out to read some of these posts and share with friends and family. Keep on sharing the posts and website. Keep those comments and interactions going. Let’s keep growing this !!!!

Today we will be discussing the idea of Choice. I’ve been musing on this idea for some time now and it has taken me several iterations to finally distill some sort of coherent post on my thoughts on Choice. After repeating it a couple times to a few of my friends, I’ve settled on the idea of Life being a River, and the only tool we have to navigate it is Choice, the rudder to our metaphorical boat through which we navigate life in. You, and you alone hold the power of your own Choices. A bit philosophical, but that’s what rainy Sundays along the Liesbeek River are meant for right?

A couple months ago I was chatting to long time friend of mine (when I say Long time friend, we cannot exactly place how and when we became friends, and that our parents know each from their Primary/High School days), Vuyo Tsotsotso, and we were just reflecting on a rather difficult September for the both of us. We were both having a tough time at work and we also just had, what we thought, a streak of bad luck in life in general. Of course, during the thick of things, you fail to see any way out and things can look gloomy. IIt’s is very easy for the mind to focus and latch on to things we believe are the biggest problems out there in the world. The mind’s ability to zoom in and fixate on things deemed “important” will never cease to amaze me. After a bit of reflection, some light hearted teasing and affirmations, we were all smiles and full of laughter. We were relatively upbeat after our discussion because we were able to make light of our situations and realized that we do have to consider that on a net basis, we were okay; things could be worse.

After the discussion, I began to really think about what just happened. The mere fact that we could just talk each other out of our funks was really cool. I realized that what changed was what we decided to focus on. What happened was that we “chose” to focus on the positives, but were also cognizant of the negatives. And although very basic, I realized that that’s all we have really in life, we have Choice. That is the one true thing that we have actual control over. Choice is the only tool we have in navigating life.

Now, for the metaphor… I thought about life as a river. Now, when one thinks of a river you need to consider all its aspects for this metaphor to truly hit. A river is both serene but has the potential to be turbulent and difficult to navigate. A river has both calm and rapid waters. As a single human being, you cannot control the way in which a river moves and flows; it has its own path that it follows that no one has any direct impact on its way of coming to being (broadly speaking). From this perspective, the river’s behavior and way of being is neither personal to or does it go out of its way to change for you. Life has similar aspects in my view.

And now for the boat. Imagine a regular wooden boat. To propel this boat up against the flow of the river would require a lot of resources and tools. You would need a substantial amount of fuel, need a set of tools and technical know how to fix the engine in case it fails at some point, or to just perform regular maintenance. It soon becomes a difficult task to do, on a long enough time horizon. From this deduction, it becomes a futile exercise when you look at the amount of work needed to continuously go up against the river. Therefore, its best to just flow with the river, as opposed to fight against it. Again, I view this as a principle of life as well. Going against the flow of life and not accepting the flow of it is a difficult task to do over a long enough time period, so its best to try and navigate it whilst flowing with it, not against it.

Now, for the final piece of the puzzle, how do you navigate such a boat in a river? Well, the best tool would be a rudder. For those of you who may not be familiar with a rudder, a rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other conveyance that moves through a fluid medium. For those of you who are more “30 Seconds” inclined, its the thing on the back of a boat that looks like a fin; usually used to direct the boat.

I like to think of the Rudder of Life as Choice. We each have a rudder and we can decide where to steer our boat to whilst traveling down this river called life. We can decide to steer ourselves to relatively calmer waters or decide to stick it out in the difficult rapids. We all have that ability, what is scary for most is realizing that they do in fact hold that power to choose. The idea of acknowledging that one is wholly responsible for what they decide to do is still quite daunting to a lot of people or rather, the concept of it is lost to a lot of people. It comes with a feeling of a lot of pressure. A “power” too big to manage. I this avoidance or fear of this “power” is what makes people so opposed to the idea of fully accepting responsibility for their choices.

However, I do feel that there are reasons for this. What’s also important to realize is what are the influences in making the choice. That’s the tricky part. It’s the knowledge of self. It’s knowing, and accepting why you are making the choice that you are making. It’s the influences that have made you choose one thing over the other, why you decided to procrastinate, why you decided on not taking that chance. That is where the heart of all of this is, it is the understanding of what drives the choices you make and why is it so.

Perhaps this is what people fear the most. The amount of work needed to truly accept and understand the influences and influencers who have shaped their process in making their Choices.

I’ve been on a bit of a war path with this idea of choice, and have been telling a few close friends of mine that we need to realize that Choice is the only thing we have, and it is our responsibility to know why we make the choices we make. You are responsible for being the captain of your own ship, and you need to decide which waters you are going to tackle and which waters you will avoid. Understanding why you made those choices is another important thing to be aware of. Life without this knowledge, is like Death in disguise.

Life is the River, Choice is the rudder; you need to be in control of the rudder as the captain of your ship. The waters await.

Until next time,

Thomo.