I Stopped Trying to Break Through the Rock

The water didn’t stop when it hit the rock.

It slowed. It swirled. It found another way.

I was walking along a mountain stream with my husband recently. Listening to the water move around curves, over rocks, under bridges. Never forcing. Never stopping. Just finding the next open path.

I’ve been that water. More than once.

The first time I really understood it, I was in college. I didn’t make the women’s basketball team. I had built myself around that game. My identity, my friendships, my sense of where I fit. All of it lived around basketball. When the list went up and my name wasn’t on it, something collapsed.

I didn’t know who I was without it.

It took time. Quiet, uncomfortable time. But eventually I found my way back into the current. Different path. Same person, just reshaped a little.

Decades later, the rock showed up again. Bigger this time.

I was building a corporate career. Capable. Accomplished. Restless in a way I couldn’t quite name. I was handed work that didn’t match what I wanted to be responsible for. I didn’t want to change a few lines of code. I wanted to write the whole thing. I kept waiting for it to feel like mine.

It didn’t.

Leaving wasn’t dramatic. It was more like water finding a way. A slow realization, then a decision, then a different path forward.

The stream doesn’t announce when it changes direction. It just moves.

Here’s what those two moments taught me, separated by decades but identical at the core: you don’t have to break through the rock. You’re not supposed to. The rock isn’t the problem. It’s information. It’s telling you the current path is blocked.

Your life is doing the same thing right now. Pay attention to where you keep stopping.

Re-entering the current looked different than I expected. I didn’t go back to corporate. I built my own way of working. I chose the projects. I chose the clients. I chose the difference I wanted to make.

The corporate world no longer owned me.

The water in an eddy isn’t failing. It’s resting. Gathering. It will find its way back to the current when it’s ready.

So will you.