The Insignificant

Note: Wrote what came to mind whilst hearing the beautiful melody "The Mighty Rio Grande". Plenty of people cross the Rio Grande which runs throughout Mexico. It's the fifth largest in North America, according to Google, and 20th longest river in the entire world. It runs through wilderness, villages, and beside homes. And it made me think of physical rivers and how long they are. If you were to frequent them enough you'd eventually get to know it so intimately that you know what particular spot is coming up next. And these spots make you feel some type of way. Like when you've lived in a town long enough you know the gas station around the corner, the old woman that waits at the bus stop everyday at 9AM, the crack in the sidewalk that hasn't been fixed since you were in sixth grade. You just get to know it intimately, yet, there's a lot more up ahead you don't know. I guess that's more or less what I was thinking. (Disclaimer: I don't own any rights or property of the music or the video. It's just to enjoy alongside the writing. Thanks!)

I never understood how great a river was while seeing it with my own eyes, nor just how beautiful it could be even standing in the middle of the chaos.

My own feet have yet to cross the familiar, yet different, waves that my great grandmothers and forefathers have cried and laughed through. It seems to long but I've only gone about half the way, nor did my toes dig between the sharp, jagged edges and corners of the river bed that all the bears seem to settle upon up one particular spot up ahead. They are sitting and waiting. I'm floating, wading, and sometimes feel as though I've been waiting, too.

I've only seen the salmon spawn, I've seen a few trees, the grass growing, birds flying. But up ahead is unknown.

My eyes haven't seen all of it. But I taste the grit from the dirt, I feel the shove from the waves, I feel there is more. The shocking cold eating away at my bones and making my fists clench I have felt, the unforgiving tides that thrust me towards the unknown I am well acquainted, yet, don't know it enough as to guess where it takes it's guests. It's always the same view but our eyes see it differently than those before. Horribly ugly, I think, why go any further than now? A sick curiosity that isn't satiated, one-track mind similar to the top of the river's illusionary current that actually comes from all directions influences everyone. Could we be anything more than this? How many people have cried here? Too many to know, enough to be felt. In each person, there lied within them the ability to remember, to hope, and to dream. How that looks seems the same but maybe it is truly different.

Then I wonder how many people have cried in this river, too? And if the tears fall, do they not fall into the water and make it saltier than before? And does it not taste different when the next person comes? But maybe amidst the grand volume of it, the tears are lost, and maybe some people didn't make it to see the end. Maybe some don't get to see what it's like even if they do get to the end.

I still don't understand it myself. Some days the river has me and some days I can grasp the river in my hands like reigns on a horse.

Understanding it is entirely different than experiencing it, over time water can soothe edges of rocks, sneak into the tiniest crevices, it can destroy or quench a thirst, and yet remain the same despite changing everything. It's never in one place at once, yet, it's always running at all moments from every which way. Never whole but always together. Always the same but always changing, shaping, flowing. It can be be taken for granted or praised. It can drown and it can save.

Never once did I see the end, nor do I understand it from the eyes of another, nor does being born in the river help me to know it better, but allowing it to take me when I don't want to has shown me how great it can be when I accept it.

Maybe it looks different for everyone but it's all the same. We are the insignificant little things surrounded by other little things that make this river so grand, so horrible, so wild, so sweet, and so sad but because of eachother we are the reason why it could mean anything at all. We were insignificant little things but because of eachother we can try to understand it. Maybe letting it take us together means more than going in alone. We were always insignificant little things, always fighting, always thrashing, crying since the beginning. But someday because of eachother the river won't feel as much of a mystery.

I never understood it until now that the insignificant little things are the river.