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Life’s difficulties can become opportunities for developing wisdom, creativity, and purpose.

The words we choose to live by can influence how we respond to uncertainty, resistance, and change.

Sources of inspiration, including memories, rituals, and relationships, can renew our sense of possibility.

Dedicated to Wendell Berry and The Berry Center, whose work continues to inspire care for the land, for community, and for the life we share.

In Standing by Words, Wendell Berry writes, “The impeded stream is the one that sings” (Berry, 1983). I keep returning to this line. Picture a stream running over a smooth, open bed. The water moves easily and makes almost no sound. Put stones in its path, and the water has to find its way around and over them, and that’s when we hear it. The resistance gives the stream its voice.

Berry’s image speaks to the way we live. He sees uncertainty, resistance, and inspiration as essential companions on any meaningful journey. Inspiration opens up possibility. When life becomes hard, our first instinct is usually to want the difficulty gone. We want certainty back. We want the stones out of the stream. Berry offers another way to see it: The moments of not knowing are where wisdom, creativity, and purpose take shape. The challenge is to stay engaged with what baffles and resists us long enough for it to shape us.

Guidance, Practice, and Renewal

Staying engaged needs something to guide us, something to keep us practising, and something to renew us when we’re tired. In therapy, I talk about these as the three M’s of intentional living: a Motto, a Mantra, and a Muse. Each one answers one of Berry’s companions. A........

© Psychology Today