Think or Thwim, Mame Hill!

The waters in my life’s regatta had been choppy, to say the least. It was as if my internal compass had been set “against the flow” and my rudder aimed toward adventure and the unknown. Often, I found myself in unique places and sometimes under unusual circumstances. I didn’t know why it seemed like I had chosen the river less paddled, but I found myself in a contra-current and heading straight for white water. Nevertheless, I tried to stay vigilant and powered my “fit and ready” schooner on high-octane bubbly and a smile.

Spawned and sprouted on the riverbanks of the AuSable River in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, home to some of the largest freshwater inland lakes on the planet, it’s only natural for me to think of life in maritime terms. I could swim before I could walk, spent summers fishing for my breakfast, and
became an expert at skipping stones.

I learned early that even a pebble, however small, will generate a ripple, however slight, and the same for bigger stones and rocks. And although, as a child, I fully participated in this natural cause and effect, I was unaware of the most elementary laws of movement, energy, and intention. I couldn’t see what was going on beneath the water but if I hovered over a well-inhabited fish bed, I would observe that the startled creatures below would send up bubbles in acknowledgment of my simple, stone offering. Occasionally, and well worth the effort in tossing those stones, a fish would surface and show me what it’s really like to make a splash!

Like you, in my neck of the woods, I first learned to navigate my primordial pond by testing familiar waters. You may have been spawned and sprouted in a remote location, not near water… but we have all been participants in this “flow of cause and effect” in life. Back in our homeschools, from guppy to tadpole and junior swimmer to sailor, we’ve all gone through our own “see-fairer’s” training. But, yet still unaware of the bigger sea beyond our lagoon, and under the necessary protection of our natal umbrella (arguably, the conditions not always stable or desirable), we largely seem to reap only the benefits (and consequences) of our actions and those in our immediate reach. After tossing those stones, a fish broke water and made a splash! A frightened, nearby frog leaped towards a family of floating ducks that, then, took immediate flight. This caused the startled school of fish below to swim
directly towards the fisherman’s lure.

Well, that’s that, right?! Old man Elmer would get his fish. Maybe. Maybe not. I say, “You’re welcome, Elmer!” But, then what stirs below the depths of what we don’t see and in a world that we don’t understand? What happens beyond the reaches of our vision and knowledge? Where did those ducks fly to and was it my rock that caused all of that? And does it even matter?

Indeed, it does.

I began to become keenly aware of this fluid cause and effect in my life when I was thirty-nine years young. Statistically, I was only halfway through my regatta but had just been served what seemed to be my “docking orders.” Having battled a plank-long list of diagnoses with the common threads “connective and auto-immune,” followed by “incurable but treatable,” treatable was a welcome wave of solace… at first. But after years of hard-core “treatments,” my vessel had become ravaged, waterlogged, and now resembled a dinghy! Would I be damned to forever float down the River Styx?

Unrecognizable, I was two times my normal weight; chronically ill; in pain; losing hair; losing teeth; losing wherewithal. And despite having owned and operated a state award-winning, bilingual childcare facility, I became physically incapacitated, emotionally unstable, and pharma dependent. Beyond that tip of the iceberg, I would reel in the entire experience to find that I had also landed a brain tumor.

How, and even if, all things are connected has been a subject of study and debate for millennia. Under every scientific and philosophical vocation from Aristotle to Darwin and Einstein to Jung, they all agree on one Universal Law: The Law of Cause and Effect. In layman’s terms: If you throw a rock in the water, there will be a splash. But now we don’t have to be rocket scientists to know how to scare fish. And beyond the multitude of theories, supported or not, this is not a tutorial. This is my “true-torial”.

Like a twenty-first century hybrid straight out of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Gods Must Have Gone Crazy,” I found myself on a path where many of us find ourselves now, and all eventually will. I was preparing to meet my maker.

Luck, miracle, magic, or destiny, call it what I will… that path became a life-saving and life-altering journey to a place that most of us only read or hear about; a place much like “Avatar.” What happens beyond the reach of our vision and knowledge before, during, and after we’ve sent stones plunging is, indeed, the real story here.

Whether you are docked or drifting in murky waters, or sailing full-steam ahead in your regatta, our waters meet here.

And so, like water, this journey begins where it ends and ends where it all begins…

‘tis always darkest before the light, though the light never rescinds.

And just as light must subdue the night, calm will conquer the storm.

But, woe to the mate who checks his chart too late and misses the stern warn.

Though riddled with rhyme, this began at the time that I was about to be sunk.

Strap on your life-preserver, fellow mariner, and think, thwim, or be thunk!

Mame Hill ©2011