I grew up in the mountains near Buena Vista, Colorado, one of the best whitewater rafting and kayaking spots in the country. I go back to my hometown periodically to do a little rafting when the water level is high. As the water goes up the rocks get covered, the waves get bigger, and the excitement gets kicked up a notch or two.

A few years back, as I prepared to go down the river, I talked to some of the guides that had gone down the river recently. While we were preparing, I met with the trip leader to find out if anything had changed on the river since I had last rafted.  As we talked through the rapids, it became clear that most of the normal routes were no longer good, and I would need to take the rapids differently or take a different path. At that moment I thought back to my training and what a guide should do in the event that they come upon an obstacle that they couldn’t get away from. The answer was simple, hit it head on and with momentum.

When a raft hits things sideways, the river stalls the boat, sucks one of the tubes underwater, and dump people and/or flip the boat. When that happens we run a higher risk of passengers getting injured. People get cold and wet in the 40-degree water as they’re left floundering in the middle of a river that has a current that much stronger than they can fight.

As I thought about this, it reminded me that rafting is a lot like life. Sometimes the water is high, sometimes it’s low. Sometimes we have rapids, and sometimes the river is calm. Sometimes life moves quickly, and sometimes it moves slowly.  You have to be prepared to navigate everyscenario.

On the river, depending on the water level and the situation, the route that we take is different from one we’ve taken before. We have to adjust, look downstream, read the water and talk to people that have navigated the route before.

When the water is high it also is moving much faster than usual. When it’s moving fast we have less time to react to the changes that are coming our direction. The ever-changing conditions make it all the more important that when we come across challenges that we put ourselves in the best position possible to navigate the rapid.  

Hitting the rapids sideways on the river,  or in life, will almost always get us in trouble.  Set up for the right route early, hit challenges head-on and with momentum. If we do that, we are in a better position to survive the powerful rapids, if we don’t the river of life will let us know just how powerless we are.