The Meander

maybe this is growing up XIII

30 min write on a Sunday; Reflection: writing has been a helpful snapshot of my current state of mind. Revisiting old memos always promises a new adventure.

There’s always another lesson to be learned from nature. For me, I’ve found rivers one of the more enchanting artifacts, particularly those who meander. I’m moved less by the rush of waves breaking at the shore, more by the winding wandering journey of these flows.

(NASA, Amazon River)

Maybe what I’m appealed to in nature reveals, subconsciously, the values I cherish. To some extent at least. The most thoughtful people I know have had cross-domain, cross-cultural, cross-passion fundamentals. I admire that. There is an intangible spark of those I know who wander organically and undertake orthogonal pursuits, and I’m still convinced the most effective generalists are just serial specialists packaged cohesively.

But like in rivers, too much meandering has tradeoffs. The river leaves those who idle behind in oxbow lakes. Isolated, stagnant pools, shut off from the flows that created them. They sit disconnected and risk getting parched unless bridged or blessed by another source. Can’t always be reading tea leaves and praying for rain though. Or can we?

At times, though, these oxbow lakes get lucky. They double down and create their own ecosystems, no longer reliant on the stream.

(Oxbow lake, Blackfoot river valley)

//

Recently I came across this quote: “It is urgent to live enchanted” by Hugo Mae. It’s been sitting like a tangle in my threads. Unsettling. Yet to be resolved.

Urgency, you say? Hmm. Didn’t I spend the last few years unlearning manifestations of what I perceived as misplaced urgency: to smell more roses, to awe in the present without needless aspiration of what’s next, to reframe/escape any artificial imposition of a ‘race’, to disregard benchmarks of age/accomplishment/signals of progress? Even walking, or doing the dishes, with relaxed shoulders and no frown.

For now, I still believe this unlearning was necessary ground work for my soul. Like compute and memory on a GPU, or KV cache orchestration between layers. Freeing up capacity gives bandwidth to take on new things, like the right forms of urgency.

Enchanted? Is this measured by the extent of awe I have at highs? Or is it signaled by how it feels when I have a moment to pause? I suspect the latter. Like how the golf swing slowed down better reveals its missing mechanics, and how beginners can avoid confronting diagnosis by swinging as hard as they can. But then, if I frame my 20s as living in the shadows, largely inevitably as I plant seeds and workshop my craft, is enchantment mutually exclusive from this phase? And when will enough work be done, enough tools sharpened or seals stamped, to walk out?

More to learn growing up. A ton more. Hugs.