Are you swimming against the current?

Are you even aware you’re in a river? | The Art of Meaning-Making Part 2

After writing the first post in this series—on the most important words a man can say—I quickly pressed on and was halfway through writing some high-brow 4000-word part 2. (With examples from culture, jokes, philosophical references, and even a new meme! All the bells and whistles.)

But then I didn’t touch my writing for a week and realized—and I have to relearn this every time—that I was making things too complex again.

Sometimes I’m such a donkey. 😂

Often, the most difficult things are better explained implicitly, through metaphor, instead of explicitly. Just like giving a hug to someone grieving a loss is a much better way to show you care than saying something like, “My condolences” or, “I’m sorry to hear that.” (Here I go, explaining again, haha!)

So, today, I’ll tell you my perspective on how meaning-making happens through a short illustrative story I wrote.¹

Awakening in the stream

Row Row Row Your Boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

After long last, you’ve become aware that you’re in a river and realize that you got sloshed around all the time, not knowing up from down, trying to swim upstream with so much effort but barely any result. You were at the mercy of the rushing water around you. This is what it felt like not to have control and having a feeling of never gaining any control. Your main drivers were existential dread, frustration, and anger at the world and its injustice.

But now that you’ve become aware you’re in a river, you laugh out loud at the idea of swimming upstream, and you realize that mucking about underwater is achieving very little as well. So you accept the lack of control, you let go, and “go with the flow.”

As you float up to the surface, you gain a clear view of the river, where it came from, and where bends, turns, and waterfalls are coming up. Then you notice that you can swim in the river, and you decide to try to reach the banks of the river. You’re able to hold onto the side of the riverbank for a very short moment, resulting in a moment of extreme clarity as the river, as life, rushes you by with its raging life force.

After a while, you realize you can even aim—or direct—tiny parts of the river’s flow using your body. You find you do have some control after all, even if it’s very little. After playing in the water with your newfound abilities, you look around and see other people in the water with you. You see many thrashing around just like you did before, and you feel a deep understanding and compassion for them. The thrashing causes some suffering, mainly for the ones thrashing around. Still, all those people struggling so hard mostly create random splashes that the river was making anyway.

You also see a few others, slowly drifting with the stream, head above water, looking ahead or to the side peacefully and with clarity, just like you. You start making eye contact, realize you’re “in the same boat,” and slowly drift to each other. The group of people you connect with in this way becomes larger and larger, and you realize that together, you can create exponentially bigger shifts in where the water flows.

Together, your actions of directing the water create temporary pools where those thrashing around in the river can find calm, peace, and joy. On top of that, the connections you build with those directing the stream with you create a sense of belonging and purpose; your realization of being in the river shows you that it’s impossible not to make meaning.

You’re grateful the river exists, for without it, you wouldn’t have had the possibility of making those connections, enjoying the flow, and helping those around you.

Afterword

As a long-time seeker of meaning, I've poured a lot of effort into “finding a purpose,” often pushing myself and others too hard. Thrashing around in the river… so to say. But eventually, I realized it’s impossible to build a meaningful life on a foundation of control. Because, in the end, there is not much you can control. Instead, I realized that the base layer of a peaceful and fulfilling life can only be surrendering to what is and, as a result, being grateful to be given the chance to enjoy the experience of existence. And funnily enough, that realization gave me more control. 

What now?

If you let the story and its consequences marinate for a bit and start to resonate with it, it gives you all you need. But in the next post, I’ll make it a little bit more concrete for two reasons:

• We live in a very left-brained society, i.e., analytical and object-oriented. I’m certainly “guilty” of over-analyzing stuff. But it does mean we sometimes find things hard to accept without a more wordy or thorough explanation.

• Second, I promised in part 1 that I’d share more about the framework of how I look at this, with a picture and all that. So I don’t want to let the people who expect that down.

So next time, I’ll go into the 4 A’s of meaning-making (hint: the bolded words in the story above).

Thanks for reading!

Jibran

1. This was actually a story I wrote in my notes last year but had forgotten about. Now I’m wondering why I didn’t share it earlier!