Beware what you drown down the river

Remember the things you abandoned in your childhood. What did you leave behind when you became an adult? Did it make you become wiser? If you look back upon the things you drowned by the river, do you think it still has stories to tell? 

As one gets older, you come to understand that your existence is not only for yourself, but it is also privy to other people. You may choose to let go of certain things that used to define you. It may be the little things, like small memorabilia, or bigger things – necessary things that you needed to abandon for one reason or another. Those aspects of yourself were carried downstream, leaving them to their place on the riverbed. 

They never truly disappear; they accumulate mud and gunk the longer you let them rest. Sometimes they haunt you. They haunt you in the various nostalgia-fuel that media is saturated with, in the toys you find in your closet, in the photos buried under stacks of books and magazines and newspapers. They haunt you until you follow it to the riverbank.

When you wake the spirit, you can choose to let the mud and gunk take over once more, or let it embody you. But in that space of uncertainty, it will reflect the image of you, weathered with age and the burdens of growing up. The choice is yours, but in that space, the spirit warns you ‘Always beware of what you drown down the river’.