Life is like a river

Life is like a river, and we are all fish

A something Lee wrote after a history test because fuck doing homework, I was braindead as hell.

Sometimes, life feels nice.  The water is pleasantly cool running through our gills, and we feel like our scales are shimmering silver and gold and we can take on any waterfall we happen to swim by.  The sun is shining beautifully and we are swimming with friends at a nice pace, happily enjoying just existing.

Other times, the water feels nastily warm and stale.  Each small wave seems to weigh down heavily, so heavy it's hard to keep swimming.  Sometimes, we're stuck feeling like that for a while.  However, we need to keep swimming in order to get out of there, to some place that feels nicer.

There are times where life and its eternally flowing river are moving much too fast.  We try to keep up, but there are predators and rocks and many other obstacles being thrown in our way.  It's tiring, and sometimes, we just can't keep up.  Eventually, we would either pick ourselves up or be pulled along by a good friend until we can swim for ourselves.  There are fishes, though, who don't pick themselves up.  Sometimes, they can't.  They don't have the strength or the willpower to do so.  Some, however, don't want to.  The currents are too harsh, they say, and they don't want to try.  In the end, though, it is each our own choice whether we will continue swimming or not, as the choice only affects one person: ourselves.

Each fish swims their own path.  Sometimes, we'll be in the same lake or river.  We'll swim with others for brief periods of time, learn from each other, help each other, enjoy each others' company.  Our destinations, however, are ours alone.  Sometimes, we'll pick the same place our parents have been, or a role model, or whoever.  When you reach the fork where the river splits into streams, it is you, not them, who will be choosing where you swim.  Some people get lost on the way, and some aren't able to find their way again in time.  Even if you don't know exactly where you want to go, start vague and figure it out a bit more as you go along.  Starting vague can be with, "What is important to me?".  Friends, family, money... each of us have our own wants that stay with us for life, directing our choices.  Therefore, it's important to start there, right at the base.  If you change your path too much, then you'll end up being the fish that never made it there, simply because "there" was never real.

Why do we swim?  After all, no matter where we are, all of us fishies will die just the same, right?  In the end, this is also different from fish to fish.  Some fish swim on simply because they enjoy swimming in the schools they were a part of.  Some fish wish to die at the same location their parents were at, or wished to have been at, to make their parents proud.  There are fish that truly are swimming for that goal, that final destination, where they can look back and be proud of having swam all the way there.  Others simply enjoy the feeling of swimming too much to give it up for anything.

All of us are fish.  Just like fish, there are so many different types of us.  We like eating different things, being different things, living different lives.  The fishies have their own conflicts.  Big fishes want to eat little fishes.  In the same way, our world is just as cruel.  However, just like the fish are all in one great body of water, we are all on this planet together. The fishes swim together in schools as they make their way through this big world.  Just the same, we have our friends to help us along.

And so, no matter which river you happen to be in right now, keep swimming.  Even if you're in the deepest reaches of the ocean, so dark and cold and with so many predators, if you keep swimming, you'll find wherever you need to be, whether that be a delta into fresh water or a colorful coral reef.  Keep swimming and never give up. 

(Woah, this was longer than I thought it was.  And I have no clue what I wanted to do with this ahahaha.)