Liz Caile Essay Contest 2008 SECOND PLACE
Sam Chapman
9/1/08
Flow
I believe in the flow. The flow is our lives; it is the intricacies and ups and downs and rituals and ways and events and in the end our lives.
Think for a minute of a creek; the creek is part of a system and just as the system affects the creek the creek affects the system. The largest system in relation to a creek is the universe. The sun gives off energy in the form of light waves, some of these eventually make it to the earth where they warm it and evaporate water from the oceans. This evaporated water condenses into clouds which are moved around by air that warms and cools because of the sun. Eventually the water precipitates out of the clouds and becomes rain or snow or some other precipitate. If the precipitate is snow or sometimes rain it joins that winters snowpack and waits for the sun to melt it. When this happens it does the same thing as rain and flow into tiny streams that join together to make a creek. Now this creek might end up in a hollow depression and stop, needing the flow of additional creeks or maybe just its tail end to catch up a little bit. Then it will grow to big for the depression and escape down. This might be in the Himalayas or the Rockies, or the Andes, or some other place. Then it will flow downhill, sometimes it will join with other creeks, or rivers, or lakes, sometimes it will dwindle to a trickle subject to the same forces that created it and sometimes it will go all the way to the ocean and eventually start the entire cycle anew.
The story of the creek is the story of the the flow. It is the flow of individuals, family's, friends, community's, subcultures, cultures, global cultures. The first lake in some high watershed is the family. The creek that comes out of it is the individual. The stones and tree trunks and terrain it goes through is the decisions and plot of everyday life. The subsequent lakes or lack thereof are the situations that most affect our flows, the rivers that the flow of our lives join is the flow of culture that some of us join and some of us don't. The oceans and lakes are the melting pots of the world where our individual flows meld and interact. Some flows are strong, some are flows are fast, some are big, some influence others flows, some are influenced, some are washed away in the path of natures flow that takes the shape of natural disasters. Some flows, perhaps those of politicians are strengthened by those even while others are washed away.
Each flow is both the product of its origins and its own actions. Life and the flow of our lives is both our origins, our environments and our own actions. Inevitably our actions are only reactions to our environment so its is not possible to totally escape our origins as the only reason to escape them is them. I believe that it is best to go with the flow but the flow can also go with you. If you want the flow to go one way it will go that way. Our destinies are a product of our origins and our decisions. I believe we are a mere creek in a watershed in a world in a universe, merely part of a vast and complex cosmic ecosystem, that will appease us and send us where we wish.