why do we need Adversity?

The Wisdom of the Eddy

I often find myself seeing metaphors for life.

Sometimes they arrive in my work with individual clients. Other times they feel like a broader truth about how life moves and unfolds.

Recently the image that kept appearing was an eddy. I found myself curious enough to look up its definition and then this week I found myself in conversation with a Welsh farmer about the health of the river on her land.

She shared that historically extra turns had been added by the Cistercian’s to the waterway as a form of land and river management.

It made me wonder.

Why would you add turns or obstacles to a river? How could that possibly benefit it?

In brief this is what I discovered.

An eddy is a pocket of recirculating water that moves counter to the main river current. It also forms behind obstacles like boulders or logs. These spaces are vital to river ecosystems because they support biodiversity manage nutrients, create habitats and concentrate pollutants.

A river without eddies becomes harsher. It flows faster and more uniformly and supports far less life.

In essence removing eddies reduces river complexity. The result is a faster cleaner looking but far less productive waterway.

As I reflected on this I could not help but think about my own life.

When I first began living a more guided life I often described it as going downstream. As I lived this way I experienced more fun more connection and more moments of what I can only describe as magic.

And yet difficulties still arose.

Even though I knew in theory that challenge is part of being human it still frustrated me. If I was in the flow surely life should be easier. Why couldn’t it just stay smooth?

To be clear my life has changed profoundly. It is happier more creative more exciting and more connected and still challenges appear.

Looking at the nature of eddies helped something land for me.

An eddy disrupts forward movement and it turns water back on itself, it unsettles sediment and it makes escape difficult.

I began to see the parallels.

The places in my life where I feel I am going in circles, where progress seems to stall. When I am asked to sit with something rather than move past it.

If these moments did not exist there would be nothing to challenge how I see myself or the world. There would be no diversity no friction and no invitation to grow.

It brought to mind those visions of utopia or the Stepford wives where everything appears perfect on the surface and yet something essential is missing. Life becomes soulless.

So what if adversity is not a mistake.

What if it is perfect, necessary, dare I say fun?

We may not like it, we may not choose it but what if we could recognise that it brings, depth, variety and health to our body, mind and soul. What would it look like then?

Your Turn

Where in your life do you feel caught up in an eddy?
What might that disruption be offering you?
And how would it change things if you trusted it as part of the flow rather than a failure of it?