When I look at the water, I feel its motion in my breath. The eye follows the curve of the river, and the body responds instinctively. Inhale. Exhale. Flowing. Breathing. The painting does not ask to be decoded so much as synchronized with. The longer I sit with it, the more my breathing softens, rounding itself to match the cadence of the current. Stillness arrives not by holding anything in place, but by yielding to what is already moving.
This has mattered deeply during Christmas break, a time that carries the cultural expectation of rest but rarely teaches us how to achieve it. Grief does not pause for holidays. Time does not suspend itself out of courtesy. Even in moments meant to be quiet, the body often remains vigilant. I felt this recently while shopping for grocerues, an ordinary errand with its fluorescent lights and familiar aisles. Without warning, pressure rose behind my eyes and spread through my body, a tightening that had no immediate cause. Nothing was wrong in the moment, and yet everything in me reacted as if it might be.
That experience clarified something essential: what we carry surfaces where we least expect it. The body does not wait for meaningful places. It responds when capacity is exceeded, when vigilance has gone on too long without interruption. In that sense, the river in Shafer’s painting feels honest. It does not pretend that movement can be avoided. It does not dramatize strain. It simply continues, shaped by time rather than broken by it.
Self-care, I am learning, lives precisely in this distinction. Much of what passes for self-care emphasizes indulgence or distraction. It emphasizes gestures that may soothe briefly but rarely address the deeper tension underneath. What the water suggests instead is regulation rather than relief. The river does not escape motion; it finds balance within it. Care, then, is not about adding something new, but about removing unnecessary resistance.
My practice of zazen has become an expression of this understanding. To sit is not to empty the mind or resolve grief. It is to remain upright and still while everything else continues to move. Breath flows in and out. Sensations arise and pass. Thoughts drift through awareness like ripples across water. Nothing is chased away. Nothing is held too tightly. Stillness and movement coexist, each giving shape to the other.
This coexistence is what makes meditation feel like rest rather than effort. The body remains stable while the interior landscape shifts continuously. The practice teaches me how to stay present without bracing. It teaches me how to be still in the present while flowing in the current of time. Like the river, I am not asked to stop. I am asked to flow.
Shafer’s landscape reinforces this lesson visually. The surrounding land does not resist the river’s passage; it bends subtly toward it, shaped by long familiarity with flow. There is no rupture here, no struggle for dominance. Everything participates in the same rhythm. In that integration, I recognize a model for care that does not isolate or harden, but adapts over time.
Breaks, understood this way, are not pauses in living. They are pauses in bracing. They interrupt the low-grade vigilance that grief and responsibility cultivate. Sitting with this painting, or sitting on my cushion in meditation, I feel that interruption occur quietly. Breathing deepens. Attention widens. The pressure eases not because anything has been solved, but because nothing is being demanded.
Stillness, as the water shows me, is not fragile. It does not shatter at the first sign of movement. It is durable precisely because it flows. The river carries memory, weight, and continuity without becoming rigid. It adapts without panic. That adaptability is what I am practicing now. It is not mastery over time, but trust within it.
Flowing.
Breathing.
Still in the present, carried forward all the same.
In Upper Truckee Gambol, and in my own sitting, I find the same quiet instruction: healing does not require stopping the current. It requires learning how to remain within it without fear.