It's All Water Under the Bridge

The Brisbane River seen from The Goodwill Bridge,
as it never will be again

One saying that really grates on me is "It's all good!".

I can see that the intentions behind the saying are "all good" by the people who use it, but it is "all wrong" ... or half wrong, anyway. 
Because things are neither all good, nor all bad - they are a mixture of both.
Some things can change according to how we perceive them, that's true, but some things are just bad no matter how you want to paint them.
All things in life are lessons, but that doesn't make them "all good". 
Some are extremely tough and quite painful from where we stand ... and some just can't be understood from our perspective in this life, no matter how much we philosophize as to whether they are good, or bad.

I finally finished reading a book that I purchased (above) and wrote about a year ago in this post;

“The Twelfth Insight”?  
I have since read all of the books and watched the DVD featured in that post and would recommend them all ... with the exception of  
The Twelfth Insight, maybe?

The Brisbane River flowing beneath the Victoria Bridge

Chapter 8 of this book Taking the Leap I liked so much that I felt I just had to quote the following passage from it in length, as it explains why I like to sit and meditate on life near bodies of water like rivers, lakes and oceans. 

From chapter 8, Uncovering Natural Openness from  
Taking the Leap by Pera Chodron;
"Nothing is static and permanent. 
And that includes you and me.
We know this about cars and carpet, new shirts and DVD players, but are less willing to face it when it comes to ourselves or to other people. 
We have a very solid view of ourselves, and also very fixed views about others. 
Yet if we look closely, we can see that we aren't even slightly fixed.
In fact, we are as unfixed and changing as a river. 
For convenience, we label a constant flow of water the Mississippi or the Nile, very much the way we call ourselves Jack or Helen.  
But that river isn't the same for even a fraction of a second.
People are equally in flux - I am like that, and so are you.
Our thoughts, emotions, and molecules are constantly changing.
If you are inclined to train in being open - endedly present to whatever arises - to life's energy, to other people, and to this world - after a while you'll realize you're open and present to something that's not staying the same. 
For example, if you are truly open and receptive to another person, it can be quite a revelation to realize that they aren't exactly the same on Friday as they were on Monday, that each of us can be perceived freshly any day of the week. 
But if that person happens to be your parent or sibling, your partner or your boss, you are usually blinded and see them as predictably always the same. 
We have a tendency to label one another as an irritating person, a bore, a threat to our happiness and security, as inferior or superior; and this goes way beyond our close circle of acquaintances at home or at work.
This labeling can lead to prejudice, cruelty, and violence; and in any time or place when prejudice, cruelty, and violence occur, whether it's directed by one being toward another or by groups of beings toward other groups, there is a theme that runs through: 
"This person has a fixed identity, and they are not like me."
...There is a whole other way to look at one another - and that is to try dropping our fixed ideas and get curious about the possibility that nothing and no one remains always the same.
This starts, of course, with getting curious and dropping the limiting stories we've created about ourselves. 
Then we have to stay present with whatever is happening to us.
What I find helpful is to think of whatever I am experiencing - whether it's sadness, anger, or worry; pleasure, joy, or delight - as simply the dynamic, fluid energy of life as it is manifesting right now.
That shifts the resistance I have to my experience.
Because I've been practicing this approach for some years now, I've come to have confidence in the capacity for open receptivity, for wakefulness and nobility, in all beings. 
And I have seen that how we regard and treat one another can draw this nobility out....
...Usually when we're all caught up, we're so engrossed in our story-line that we lose our perspective.
The painful situation at home, in our job, in prison, in war, whatever we might find ourselves caught in the difficulty, our perspective usually becomes very narrow, microscopic even.
We have the habit of automatically going inward.
Taking a moment to look at the sky or taking a few seconds to abide with the fluid energy of life, can give us a bigger perspective - that the universe is vast, that we are a tiny dot in space, that endless, beginingless space is always available to us.
Then we might understand that our predicament is just a moment in time, and that we have a choice to strengthen old habitual responses or to be free.
Being open and receptive to whatever is happening is always more important than getting worked up and adding further aggression to the planet."

Something that I will be pondering on my next trip to, or over a large body of water ... or even a pond, for that matter.

It may not be "all good", but it is all just water under the bridge that we can observe flowing past us without the urge to go swimming, or drowning ourselves in.
And let's not forget clouds are mostly bodies of water floating right by us, too.
But how many of us take note of those bodies of water floating by us, while our mind is focused on the river water? 
Sometimes ... well, always really ... there is more happening around us than we care to observe.