Stood outside of a rainy night, there I was in typical contemplative mood, following a week of a lot of activity, a lot of thought provoking circumstances. In one hand a glass of wine, in the other a cigar - an indulgence that is very rare, but does occasionally happen when the need takes me. Maybe a few times a year. Normally on a momentous occasion, or at a point where I find myself at some kind of significant crossroad. This night, it found me somewhat at both.
And so, as it often does on a dark night, I found myself regarding the light that existed in the dark. In this case, the light illuminating a large and exceptionally beautiful tree. I've never gone up close to the tree, nor do I know its type. I have never experienced its kind shade in the glare of the sun, nor the feel of its bark on the skin of my hand. But still it managed to give me something that was utterly profound and fascinating.
As I stood regarding the tree on this gently rainy night, the water had not flown from the heavens for at least an hour. So whilst the air was pleasantly damp, the tree itself was largely free of water.
As I stood and watched, regarded its manifold branches and nuances, tried in my paltry human way to understand its geometry, interactions and levels, the rain came once again. And something both wonderful and ghastly occurred. Choice, and waterfalls.
I've had to deal a lot recently in work life with the concept of cascading information, which we often refer to as moving in a waterfall pattern. It starts at one point and moves down the waterfall pattern, separating and separating, each leg and each diversion that it takes creating a new flow and a new leg that, piece by piece, diverges it from the original context and the original path.
As I watched the tree in all its glory, it began to rain. And at first, the only sound was the initial droplets striking the leaves of my tree. But another sound, similar yet unmistakeably distinct, began to augment it over time. As the raindrops accumulated, they coalesced, something you could hear without ever seeing. And then they began to run from one leaf to the next, in a cascade. In hundreds, thousands of tiny waterfalls. Each one following down a path that was generated due to the place in which the raindrop, and all its manifold brethren, fell.
And so it is with choice. Every choice. Accumulating like raindrops on leaves, creating little cascades that focus into a flow of water that finally takes you down a path, and on to conclusion. Of sorts.
And so, as felt in the perception, goes life. A series of small decisions - a series of tiny raindrops - that eventually lead you into your own small cascade and into your conclusions in life. It is particularly fascinating to watch at a time where many around you are suddenly dropping into their own true cascades, where they choose a partner, choose to have children, choose to move, choose to take a job, choose to keep some friends and to lose others.
Once you begin the cascade - once you become a part of the true flowing waterfall - your eventual conclusion is often very much clear and decided. Whether this is good or bad, I leave up to your own mind to tell. But it's all a matter of perspective. Even when your decisions and your waterfall are outwardly similar, it is the nuances; the small decisions that you make in life, that make your own cascade so very distinct from all the others. And in that breath, in that moment of clarity that shows you how utterly unique your waterfall is, shows you how completely fundamental it is to you and to your reality.
It is that one simple, yet fundamental concept that allows me to know that all of us have the ability to define our own tiny waterfalls, our own unique cascades. And perhaps more interestingly, makes that deviation of person to person utterly inevitable. Perhaps it also makes us somewhat more isolated as we get further and further into our own divergence. And perhaps that is why our circles of close ones tends to focus inwards as we ride the currents. As we ride our waterfall down its own path.
And here we reach my rambling conclusion. The problem, if you regard it as such, will always be choice. You have it, you use it, and each one is a raindrop on a leaf. Each one guides us to the avenue of life we will inhabit, throughout the cascade of life, love and laundry. So choose them wisely.
Or perhaps it was just a tree. Your choice.
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