06/17/2026
Think of a river, and you are standing on the bank.
For many of us, most of our lives, we have been in the water. A worry rises and we are already downstream in it. Someone says the thing, and the current of our reaction has us before we can plant a foot. We are not watching the river. We become the river, churning.
This is not something I teach from the bank, dry and untouched. I learned it the way most of us do, by going under..
To become the witness. To find solid ground and stand on the bank.
The debris is there, going by in the current. The argument you did not finish. The diagnosis. The friend who is struggling. The old regret that surfaces every spring. Piece after piece floating past, and every one of them calling your name.
Here is what i invite you to start to notice. The moment you see the debris, every instinct says jump in. Save it. Pull it out. You have spent decades doing exactly that, in the water before you have thought, going under with the very thing you meant to rescue. You did not save it. The river just took you both.
So you learn to stand on the bank and look first.
Some debris you let go by. It is not yours to carry, and watching it pass is not the same as not caring. It is the hardest love there is.
Some things you do go in for. But you put the life jacket on first. You keep one foot on the ground. You reach for what you can actually reach, and you know the way back before you ever step off the bank.
That knowing is the whole practice. Discernment. The clear seeing before you move: Is this mine to pull from the water? Can I reach it without going under? What is the cost, to me and to everyone who needs me whole, if I drown trying?
And the things that keep you jumping in have names. Obligation, the voice that says it is your job, it has always been your job, who else will do it if you do not. Guilt, the one that arrives the moment you even think about staying on the bank, whispering that keeping your own feet dry is selfish. They always disguise themselves as love, which is why they are so hard to refuse. They are not small feelings. They are the current itself, pulling you off the bank before your clear seeing ever gets a word in.
You are not trying to dam the river. The water will always move. The debris will always come.
The practice is learning to stand beside the river, see what it carries, and choose with clear eyes which pieces to let pass and which to wade in for, life jacket on and feet on the ground, the way home already known before you ever step off the bank.
This is not always easy.
So I will leave you with this. Of everything moving through your water today, what is truly yours to pull out, and what have you been drowning for that was only ever meant to float past?
~ Leslie