Cruising along the Danube from Linz to Passau with the top down and my spirits high, I realized how tenuous life can be.

Just a few weeks prior to that moment, the entire road I was driving had been covered in several tons of water.

The landscape is now covered with a film of silt that the river had hurled onto it. And yet, most everything survived, even if it changed form. Forever.

Life is like that. We experience a flood of emotions that cover us with a layer of sand, shifting our bodies, our hearts, our minds. Sometimes, in the storm of our feelings, we get rejected, like too much water that has spilled over our banks and into places that shouldn’t be. Or we get embraced so tightly we have nowhere else to go but over the edges of ourselves into spaces that once held supple verdancy, but suddenly got raked over by the forces of Nature.

I felt a compassion for the Earth in a completely new way

as I motored over the miles of road that brought me back to Bavaria. The lovely grass that now lay barren, the trees that stood in their stoic silent power, the boats that floated upon the surface of the roaring river’s bend.

I am humbled by the strength and resilience of Nature. It teaches me time and again that I have less control than I sometimes believe. We are all subject to the unexpected. We must deal with that which we emit into the Universe.

It is a true mystery, this life.

If you find yourself in deep water, know that the tides will eventually recede. You may have to get your feet wet a few times in this lifetime, but that is why you are here.

Staying on dry land won’t form you. Jumping into the river will.

Besides, when you are in deep water, that’s when you truly know what you are capable of. You are stronger than you think. And it is in those moments that you can prove what you are made of.

It is the Universe’s intention to form us to our most beautiful potential.

I’m ready for it, come what may. Are you?