Nature is not easy to work with.  She is effortless, and yet requires so much effort.  That's not necessarily a bad thing - I believe that everything worth while requires some effort. 

I often think of the Buddhist adage to 'go with the flow of water' - it has become a mantra of mine. Whenever I encounter something very trying on the farm, and I lose my cool, which can be most days, I imagine that I have been trying to walk up this narrow river, expending my energies counter-current, instead of taking the path of least resistance with the waters flowing downriver.  When I have had poor sleep, when everything decides to fall apart on the same day, when the sheep get out of their fencing, when seeds fail to germinate, after a minor or major meltdown, I think of Bruce Lee, and that these things aren't happening to me as some sort of punishment. I remember that there are things I can control - I can move the sheep before they get too hungry, I can reinforce their fencing; things break and they need fixing; I need to be slow and gentle when for lack of sleep; and not all seeds will make it. 

Here is what Bruce Lee wrote, on being like water : 

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

When I try to fix a problem without first really understanding the problem, I don't end up fixing the problem -  surprise surprise. But sometimes the diagnosis is difficult, or simply out of reach.  I can't control the weather or what other beings will do. What I can control is how I approach problems, my perspective, my reaction, my level of agency and consideration: and importantly, who I ask for help! I see nature as a timeless Mother, a timeless River of Water, and I am a wayward human who is learning her ways -  learning to better work with her, certainly not against her. 

Going with the flow doesn't mean being super relaxed and breezing down the river on a tube with a beer in hand: not to me anyways. To me it means working smarter, not harder: understanding the elements at play - working with gravity, with physics, understanding how a tool works and how it is best used, and in what situation to use it.  I think it is a practice of adapting our ways, bending towards others, getting to know how we grow, thrive, or feel safe, in so many different ways. We all thrive in very different conditions. 

Bruce Lee's 'be like water' grounds me, reminds me of the path of least resistance, of working smarter not harder, of being gentle and solid.  I still get angry at sheep fencing three times a week, because it gets snagged in a branch somewhere, and I try brute force at the risk of breaking the fence instead of taking a few steps back and untangling the darn thing. I have so many tools I don't really understand, and I take a lot of shortcuts  - but I try to work on these things and make improvements in my self. I think it's about awakening our senses, tuning in, and always working towards improvement : it is all a journey.

Be like water.