Lessons from Nature... the Clyde River

I see a world without boundaries...
This past weekend I had the opportunity to spend a grueling seven and half hours on the Clyde River. Although I'm somewhat sore and sunburned because of the excursion, I had truly a wonderful time. It was really nice to be out, I haven’t really been able to be out in nature for quite sometime and found myself, yet again, in awe of it all. Reflecting back, I didn't speak much the entire day, which must have made me a boring Canoeing partner for Alicia, but thinking about it, I tried hard to think about what I must have been thinking about. I'm one to think pretty much a lot most of the time, but really I found that I wasn't anywhere else but in the moment. I don't "not think" much, and I feel somewhat rejuvenated by simply taking the world around in. I've always found Nature to be the best guide for life and the future, and that day was no different.

On the river, just as in life, we are being carried inevitably forward... Sometimes we try to paddle back upstream, only to inevitably be carried forward once more. There were a lot of parts that were smooth sailing, calm, and peaceful. Yet we did manage to run into a bit of shrubbery now and then, have to portage our canoe over quite a few logs, and even fell into the river once... Yet that's what made the adventure. The day was no less great because of these hang-ups, we just kept working our way through the obstacles the river put in our path. Life is no different, life cannot be measured in solely hardships, but rather the calm areas and the striving through such times. Imagine if we never forgot, and held onto such downtimes... We really wouldn't be able to continue down the river.

The final stretch of the river opened up, to a seemingly easy way to our last stop. The wind picked up though, and just as the river had carried us all this way, we had to push ourselves twice as hard to reach our goal. Yet just as Alicia and I had just about made it, we found one last shallow area and became stuck upon it. Sometimes seeing the finish line is the hardest part... We have to keep moving forward. I can't help but bring this back into the gaming world and what most of us strive to do in the future at the EMC. We can do anything, bold statement I know. Yet if we work hard and keep moving through these obstacles we can accomplish some really great things. The only real boundaries are in our heads, and the limits of our imagination. There's always a solution, always a better way of doing things, the hard part is recognizing that sometimes. Saying this I may sound extremely stuck up, but I don't mean to say that I'm creative enough or imaginative enough to tackle anything... but I am trying to broaden my mind to as many possibilities that I can. Who ever said "think outside the box" is brilliant. I'm going to finish with a quote I stole from Lauren's blog... I'm plagiarizing =P

"Just because everything's changing
doesn't mean it's never
been this way before."