What the River Knows About Letting Go - Barbara Taylor

The river does not argue with the stones in its bed, nor does it bargain with the banks that hold it.

It does not look back at the mountain it left behind, weeping for the snows of yesterday.

It simply runs, wild and free, with a heart set only on the ocean.

You open your hands to catch the water, but it slips through your fingers, laughing. “Why do you try to cage what was born to move?” it whispers. “Your pain comes from the holding, not from the flowing.”

Look at how the river drops its heavy mud to become clear as glass.

Look at how it bends around the rocksinstead of fighting them.

It yields, and in yielding, it conquers the mountain.

The path is already written in your feet, my friend.

Do not hold so tightly to the shores of who you used to be.

The current is not your enemy; it is the hand of the Beloved, pulling you home.

Unfurl your sails. Strip away your heavy garments of worry. Dive into the deep, where the small self dissolves, and find that you were never the traveler—you have always been the sea.

[Poem written by Google AI in the style of Rumi]