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Stop Pushing on the River

/ 2 min read

The other day, I posted this on Facebook:

One of my marvelous sister’s favorite quotes is “You can’t push on a river,” which is kind of the same thing.

The idea is that the world is how it is, generally. People are people. Society generally is how it is. And for the very, very large part, you really have to take things the way they come down the river.

Now, that is not to say that there aren’t people that have changed the world — plenty have for good and for ill. But the majority of things are not changeable by us.

To be clear, I’m talking about the world in general. You can certainly change yourself and many things about your life. But the world at large? Not so much.

Things pretty much are the way they are. I frequently forget this. For instance, today, I ran into an irritating “feature” of the software development tool I use on a daily basis, and instead of just rolling with it, I decided to post about it in an online group, complaining. It wasn’t my finest hour, even if I was right. 😊

In any event, my advice is to stop pushing on the river and manage the currents instead.