Me, You, & Iguazu

What does water think of before it makes the leap of a lifetime? Does it know the fall is coming? Perhaps there is anticipation -  a swirling excitement, but I don’t sense apprehension. Maybe it’s those stagnant tributaries, the trepid eddies that are the ones who thought twice and shied away from the thrill of living in the river. They cut themselves from the flow, slowing to a trickle, then a stop. They gather dust and algae in little swamps that must seem to them like the best it’s going to get. Their own, little, opaque ocean. Perhaps after a while they even forget the river entirely.

Miles upon miles of waterfalls. The mind simply can't take it all in - so it gives up. A living kaon.

But back to the flow. Truly, I don’t think it knows. What’s coming, that is. That would take away from all the fun! And if a waterfall is anything, it’s playful. So not in an individual sense does it know, no, but in the buzz and quiver felt through the entirety of the connected river, it’s pulse quickens just a little. It’s just in it’s flowing and dance and yet, approaching, some growing subperceptual hum set’s it’s little water hairs on end. There is a light in it that perks up, and it’s vibration quickens. Nearing the fall, it strengthens. Then it realizes - oh man, something big is coming. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s big, it’s important, and I know that I’ve waited lifetimes for this. Eons, really. Just think, for this water has been a lake, a cloud, a tree. A fruit, an insect, then me, you, and finally, FINALLY now it gets to be…Iguazu. It’s cycled through the entire natural world waiting without knowing, flowing without rushing, changing but never dying, to in this coming moment be hurled from the heights of wonder into the ordered chaos that can only come from sweet sweet surrender. And surrender it does.

A highlight: drinking hierba mate with my dad over a bowl of fresh soup.

The flow strengthens, quickens, it banks and thickens, it rolls through the curves of the smooth bed, splashing in jubilation as it not slips, not slides, not tiptoes but hurls itself headfirst for the ledge. Suspended entirely in nothing, clinging to nothing, trusting entirely, buffeted in the ecstatic display of light, mist, and it’s infinitude of brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and beyond as each spins, twirls, cavorts, and tumbles in it’s own playful part. Each takes a slightly different path off the waterfall. Every little eddy of the river for miles and miles before had been setting up each particle for it’s own perfectly unique leap, ever since that drop of water dropped from the rain, ran through the earth, and chose to join this river. It’s rapturous. It’s effortless. It’s beautiful. There’s no struggle.

That’s what it takes. How could it be otherwise? How could water resist, how could water hold on? For it to grasp, fight, is inconceivable. Could you even imagine a waterfall where the water clung to the edge like a scared child? That latched desperately to the roots of the trees of outdated rules, opinions, ideas? I’m not ready! I’m not ready! I have to go do my taxes first, I’m too tired, no no that’s for OTHER water, THIS water here doesn’t do things like that! Or a halfhearted water that failed to laugh, failed to play, but rather apathetically rolled itself out of bed and waited for something outside to make it’s day? Even THAT water wouldn’t be able to resist the flow of the river if it just gave it a chance - for the current of Iguazu is far far more powerful than the dispirited apathy of our quotidian hypnosis. Just give it a chance! God will sweep you off your feet and take you on the ride of lifetimes.

Gratitude to my family for holding me during my wild ups and downs in physical and emotional health on this trip. Pictured here: happy family with an exhausted, constipated, confused Kent coming to the realization that something big in his life needs to change.

C’mon, let her make your day! The world’s grandest waterpark awaits you and the divine is winking, hand outstretched, asking you to relax and play. C’mon, isn’t that what captivates us in the waterfall? It is guileless, authentic, without reservation, doubt, or self effacement. It is eternally youthful, childlike, ever renewed, in perpetual play. I think John O’Donahue heard her same call from far far away when he wrote. “I’d love to live life like a river flows, carried by the surprise of it’s own unfolding”. Can we live life this way?