The River’s Patience

The morning mist clings low to the valley as I follow a narrow trail through the forest. The path weaves between moss-draped pines and crumbling stone walls, remnants of a forgotten village long reclaimed by the quiet. There is a stillness in the air, yet also a sense of movement – as though the earth itself is breathing, slowly, deeply, with ancient rhythm.

After some time, I hear it: the soft murmur of flowing water. Drawn by its song, I descend a slope and come upon a river winding lazily through the trees. Its waters shimmer like liquid glass, slipping around boulders worn smooth by centuries. The current is neither hurried nor stagnant – only steady, unwavering, content to be exactly what it is.

An old man sits on a fallen log at the water’s edge, a woven straw hat tilted low over his brow. He holds a simple fishing rod, though it seems he has little concern whether it catches anything at all. He looks up as I approach and gives a slight nod, as though he has been expecting me.

“Sit,” he says softly, patting the log beside him. “The river doesn’t mind if we linger.”

I join him in silence. We watch the water swirl around a cluster of stones, shaping eddies and ripples that dance like fleeting thoughts. Minutes pass – or perhaps hours. Time, like the river, seems to loosen its grip.

Finally, the old man speaks.
“Do you see how the water moves? Never in haste. Never resisting. It simply flows, shaping the world without struggle.”

I nod, and he smiles faintly. “Many come here hoping to master life by force – to carve their way through as if the world were stone. But the river teaches another way: not to conquer, but to harmonize. To meet each obstacle not with defiance, but with patience – and so to shape even stone without ever hardening.”

He places a smooth pebble in my palm. “Hold this,” he says. “Feel its weight. Once, it was sharp and jagged. The river did not break it. It only held it, turned it, carried it – until its roughness wore away.”

I turn the pebble between my fingers. It is perfectly round, impossibly smooth. Something in me grows quiet as I hold it, as though the river’s patience is sinking into my bones.

“Walk gently,” the old man murmurs, standing at last. “Like the river. You will go farther than you think.”

Then he wanders upstream, vanishing into the drifting mist.

I sit by the river until the sun breaks through the trees, warming the moss at my feet. When I rise to continue my journey, the pebble rests in my pocket – a silent reminder that true strength is not in rushing forward, but in flowing with life until all that is rough within us has been softened by time.