It's been interesting and encouraging to see former students post on social media their gratitude and awareness of how accomplished their 2015 was and how it brought happiness to them and their families. Proud moments, indeed.
There have been "watershed" moments in history, but there are also times in our lives when there is a marked change in our own landscape; a crucial dividing point; a point in time when nothing after will ever be the same.
Watershed: a ridge of land that separates two adjacent river systems. It is also, metaphorically, defined as an event marking a unique historical change of course or one which important events depend.
Recently, there has been major flooding in the states of Missouri and Illinois where the Mississippi river flooded its banks causing devastating results in life and property. The juncture points of land, or watersheds, could not hold or control the occasion of such an onslaught of heavy rain...no place for all the water to flow. It was a moment where an unrelenting life force was more powerful than the ridges of land -- unable to handle or direct the rushing flow to other adjacent bodies of water to help alleviate the flood tide.
Our lives are filled with hills and valleys, and along the way there are crucial turning points. Some of these watershed events might seem minor in comparison with others more obvious, but when we look back, reflect, and creatively connect the dots, we can understand and even appreciate how certain moments and times have changed us. I like to call it a 'shift' in my world- things that change a life perspective, or place, or even mold and shape a new way of thinking (for good or ill).
For me, watershed moments have ranged from discovering new ideas from books I've read to the loss of close family members ("You can love someone so much-But you can never love people as much as you can miss them." -John Green).
Watershed moments could include when we met someone, an unforgettable conversation, or even a place we visited that was not planned. Perhaps the birth of a child, a college degree, or the career one always wanted to have would be considered pivotal watershed events.
We occupy a finite passage of time --this path in this time is taken by no other... it leads us to significant events and critical points along its landscape; moments of time when a force of life can and does overflow the banks of our expectations.
I've made a conscious and deliberate effort in understanding what I have learned from these crucial moments in my life. To help with a visual, I've created a chart on graph paper plotting the watershed moments (the one shown above is not my more detailed and exhaustive one). The y axis is a rating of 1-10, with 10 being the most significant. The x axis is a timeline of my years of life. With just a key word or two, I labeled each dot, each 'shift.' You could make this as thorough and detailed as you wanted. The purpose is to examine, reflect, and understand ourselves better; explain the rhyme and reason of where we are in our life and revisit how we got there. Try it.
Life, like a river, is so majestic, its constancy ever changing, It is an unrelenting winding stream flowing through the varied landscapes of our experiences. It is filled with watershed moments which intertwine through the valley of our pursuits and always makes afresh a new and different terrain on which we now travel and, hopefully, a better understanding of who we are...and where we've been..