Aliveness is a River That Carves Its Own Course
Not linear. Not polite. But steady, insistent, and deeply knowing.
For the past month, I've been riding trains and talking to strangers about what it means to feel alive. Not the careful, acceptable version of aliveness, but the messy, complicated, sometimes terrifying reality of choosing to show up fully in your own life.
This is the final piece in that series, and maybe the one that's stayed with me longest. If these conversations have resonated with you, the previous stories are waiting: the newborn teaching a car full of strangers about the revolutionary act of needing things out loud, the guy in the Radiohead hoodie who convinced me that staying liquid might be more beautiful than arriving anywhere solid, and the botanist who learned that sometimes the most radical thing you can do is finally let yourself feel the heat.
But this one—this one's about rivers. And the courage to carve your own course.
She boards with a beat-up messenger bag, a folding bike over one shoulder, and the particular confidence of someone who knows exactly where they're going, even if no one else understands the route. Her forearms tell stories in ink: a whisk wrapped in thorns, coordinates of places I've never heard of, a small knife crossed with a sprig of rosemary.
The smell of cumin and cardamom almost clings to her as she settles into the seat across from me, pulling out a notebook covered in recipe sketches and margin notes written in three different languages.
I’m surprised. Plenty of open seating. She has already broken so many rules of commuting. I look over at what she starts to work on.
"Working a double at this catering company downtown," she says, catching me looking at her notebook. "Soul-crushing corporate events. Beige food for beige people who think 'exotic' means adding paprika to their potato salad."
She laughs, but there's no malice in it, just the weary amusement of someone paying dues toward a larger dream. The kind of laugh that says I know exactly how ridiculous this is, and I'm doing it anyway because I have to eat while I build the thing I actually want.
"But not for much longer. I've got a vision board taped to my fridge.” She begins to pain the picture for me, “Canyon town in Utah, farmers market every Saturday, a little café where I can actually cook the food that lives in my dreams. Big flavors. No compromises. No uniforms that smell like an industrial dishwasher."
There's something magnetic about people who carry their dreams like she does: visible, tangible, worn close to the body like talismans. I think about the dreams I've filed away, the creative projects I've relegated to "someday," the parts of myself I've labeled "impractical."
When did I start believing that following your pull was selfish? When did security become more valuable than authenticity?
I've become so good at explaining away my own longings, at building cases for why now isn't the right time. The manuscript I keep "preparing" to write instead of writing. The cities I research obsessively but never visit. The conversations I rehearse but never have.
Her fingers trace the sketches as she talks. Elaborate spice blends that she has artfully illustrated, fusion dishes that marry her grandmother's recipes with techniques she learned in kitchens from Bangkok to Brooklyn.
She has TRAVELED!
Each drawing looks like a love letter to flavors most people have never tasted.
"Everyone keeps telling me not to leave a sure thing. 'You've got benefits! You've got stability!' My mom calls it my 'quarter-life crisis' even though I'm thirty-one. As if wanting more than mediocrity were a phase I'm supposed to outgrow."
The eyeroll was audible.
She pauses, looking out the window at the city rushing past.
"But I can't do it anymore. I feel like I'm dying in there. My friend keeps saying I'm being dramatic, but honestly? I'm not a cul-de-sac kind of woman. I'm a river. I need to move."
The Geography of Staying Put
A river.
I sit with that for a moment, feeling something click into place. Rivers are the ultimate nonconformists. They don't follow roads, property lines, or human logic. They find their own way, carving through whatever stands between them and where they need to go. Mountains? They'll cut through them, given enough time. Valleys? They'll fill them, flood them, reshape them entirely.
They don't ask permission to change course.
I think about the paths I've taken that made no sense on paper but felt inevitable in my bones. The job I took for half the salary because it lit me up inside. The relationship I ended, even though it looked perfect to everyone else. How those decisions felt terrifying and exactly right at the same time.
But I also think about all the times I've chosen the cul-de-sac. The safe job that felt like wearing shoes two sizes too small. The home I stayed in for eight extra years because moving felt frivolous. The way I've learned to present my own restlessness as a character flaw, rather than a compass.
There's a difference between planning and knowing.
Planning happens in your head—spreadsheets and pros-and-cons lists and five-year projections. But knowing happens deeper. It's the pull you feel toward certain choices that you can't explain but can't ignore.
We're raised to trust the planning over the knowing. To value logic over instinct. To choose security over the terrifying possibility that we might actually get what we want.
"My ex used to say I was restless, like it was a bad thing," she continues. "He wanted me to get a house in the suburbs, have kids, do the whole thing. But I kept thinking about my grandmother's lamb dish—how she'd spend three days making it perfect while everyone told her it was too much work. She'd just laugh and say 'some things can't be rushed.' I think that's me. I can't be rushed into someone else's timeline."
I watch her face as she talks about her grandmother, and there's something there. Not nostalgia, but recognition. Like she's seeing herself clearly for the first time in a while.
Some things can't be rushed. But that doesn't mean you wait forever to start cooking.
The Mythology of Being Reasonable
We worship at the altar of being reasonable as if it were a virtue instead of just one option among many. As if wanting more than what you have were somehow ungrateful. As if following your aliveness were a luxury only certain people could afford.
But what if being reasonable is just another way of being afraid?
I watch her flip through pages of recipes, each one a small rebellion against the beige mediocrity she's been serving. Lamb with pomegranate molasses. Cardamom ice cream with pistachio brittle. Food that announces itself, that refuses to apologize for taking up space on the palate.
"You know what's funny?" she says. "I spend my days making food that tastes like nothing for people who act like that's sophisticated. Like, yesterday I had to make 'fusion sliders' that were just sad, tasteless little burgers. We didn’t want anyone complaining about them being too much.”
She says that with finger quotes. We giggle together. A little too loudly. Cue glares from around the train. Whoops… We must have been too much, I say out loud.
We giggle even more. Cue even more glares.
She closes the notebook and looks at me directly.
"I realized I was doing the same thing with my life. Making everything safe and bland so no one would have opinions about it. But what's the point of that?"
What's the point of a life that doesn't risk offending anyone?
This hits me sideways, in that place where uncomfortable truths like to hide. I think about all the ways I've seasoned my own dreams down to nothing. The book proposals I've never sent because they felt too specific, too personal, too much like me. The conversations I've avoided because they might change things. The choices I've postponed until I could make them without disappointing anyone.
But rivers don't care about disappointing the landscape. They flow toward what calls them, reshaping everything in their path.
The Beautiful Violence of Growth
"The thing is," she says, and I can tell this is something she's been thinking about, "I'm tired of explaining myself to people who think wanting something different is automatically wrong. Like, my sister keeps asking what my backup plan is. But why do I need a backup plan for the thing I actually want to do?"
She shifts her grip on her bike, leaning up against her.
"It's like asking a river what its backup route is. It doesn't have one. It just goes where it needs to go."
Patient but not passive.
I think about the ways I've confused patience with paralysis. How I've waited for permission that was never coming, for conditions that were never going to be perfect, for courage that only shows up when you start moving anyway.
The train rocks through a turn.
"My grandmother used to make this dish—lamb and apricots with this spice blend that would make you weep. Took her three days, start to finish. Everyone said it was too much work for everyday food. But she said some things are worth the effort. Some flavors can't be rushed."
She pauses, looking down at her hands.
"I guess I'm finally understanding what she meant."
I sit with this, thinking about all the dreams I've kept in perpetual preparation mode. The novel I've been "researching" for three years. The business idea I keep refining instead of testing. The life I keep planning instead of living.
There's a difference between letting something develop and using development as an excuse never to begin.
"People keep asking me what my backup plan is," she says. "Like having a Plan B isn't just planning to fail at Plan A. My dad keeps sending me job listings for 'real restaurants' as if what I want to do isn't real enough."
She shifts the bike strap on her shoulder.
"But I don't want a backup plan. I want to try the thing I actually care about."
The Courage to Disappoint
Her stop is approaching, and something in her posture shifts—not anxiety, but anticipation. The gathering energy of someone who's about to step into the next chapter of their own story.
"Next month, I'm finally doing it. Got a friend with a food truck in Moab who says I can crash on her couch while I scope out locations. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But at least I'll know I tried instead of wondering 'what if' for the rest of my life."
The simplicity of it hits me. Not some grand manifesto about following your dreams, just the basic human desire to try something that matters to you instead of spending your life wondering what might have been.
I think about all the ways I've succeeded at things that felt like elaborate forms of suffocation. The promotions that came with golden handcuffs. The relationships where I performed compatibility instead of discovering it. The careful life I've built that looks impressive from the outside but feels hollow from within.
"Everyone's going to think I'm having some kind of breakdown," she says, standing as the train slows. "Thirty-one, leaving a decent job, crashing on someone’s couch with no real plan. But honestly? I'd rather try this and fail than spend another year making beige food."
She shoulders her bike with practiced ease, and I watch her move toward the door with the fluid confidence of someone who's finally moving in the direction of their own choosing.
Through the window, I watch her unlock her bike on the platform. For a moment, she looks up—not at me, but at something beyond the station, beyond the city, toward horizons only she can see. There's something revolutionary about people who refuse to shrink their dreams to fit other people's comfort levels.
The train pulls away, but her words stay with me.
I'm not a cul-de-sac kind of woman. I'm a river.
The Answer Already Flowing
I think about my own currents, the dreams I've been channeling into safer streams, the longings I've dammed up for the comfort of others. How I've learned to explain away my restlessness as if it were a problem to be solved, rather than information to be followed.
Outside, the real river keeps flowing, indifferent to human schedules, human fears, human need for everything to make sense before it moves. It doesn't ask permission to change course. It doesn't apologize for flooding its banks when the rains come hard.
It simply follows the deepest truth it knows: water flows toward water, and the sea is calling.
What would happen if I stopped trying to convince myself that staying put is wisdom? If I trusted that movement itself might be the map? If I let my own current carry me toward whatever's calling, even if I can't see the destination from here?
The answer is already flowing beneath the surface, waiting for me to stop building dams and start following the water home.
Some of us aren't meant to follow maps, we're meant to make them.
Carved by our own movement, defined by our own flow. The landscape will resist at first, but eventually, even mountains learn to bend around the path of something that knows exactly where it's going.
The question isn't whether you're ready to move. The question is whether you're brave enough to stop pretending you're not already in motion.
Rivers don't wait for perfect conditions. They don't apologize for changing the landscape. They just flow toward whatever calls them, patient but not passive, gentle but unstoppable.
And maybe that's exactly the kind of courage the world needs more of, the type that trusts its own current over everyone else's map of how things should go.
If this resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear that they're allowed to be a river instead of a cul-de-sac. Sometimes the permission we're waiting for comes from knowing we're not the only ones who feel this way.
Coming Thursday
If you're ready to stop building dams and start following your current, this week's offering is for you.
On Thursday, I'll be sharing Flow Where You're Called—a guided experience for paid subscribers that meets you exactly where the river of your aliveness is trying to move. Think of it as part meditation, part permission slip to stop explaining yourself to the landscape.
We'll explore what it feels like to trust your own motion, to stop mistaking preparation for paralysis, and to remember that you don't owe anyone a map of where you're going.
What would change if you stopped apologizing for being a river instead of a cul-de-sac?
Throughout June, you can join for the year at 30% off—but the deeper question is: What would happen if you actually trusted your own current?
If the button doesn’t work (especially in the app), try this link: https://lifeasisee.com/af8c645f
About Alex
I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.
Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.
These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.
This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.
Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.
Free subscribers get weekly articles and insights (sometimes twice a week!). Paid subscribers get the Thursday Offerings, seasonal companion pages, post-nidra audio, and live slow sessions. Join me?
And if you're interested in upgrading to a paid plan and would like to take advantage of the discount during June, the link to upgrade for 30% off is available for life!
Alex, Jeannie’s praise was so radiant, I couldn’t help but read the piece for myself. And yes—that was me. Every detail. The spice-sketched notebook, the lamb stew with memory folded in, the dream of a small place where food tells the truth. I’ve longed for that kind of space since before I knew how to ask for it. Real food, made from scratch and memory, the kind that lingers decades later on the tongue. I’ve tasted it only in the English countryside—in those rare pubs where the cook still believes in slow, soulful nourishment, where a stew can carry someone home.
I’ve carried this dream since 1982. Forty-three years. All those years, the river of it dammed and silenced—by trauma, by compliance, by the slow drip of being told to stay small. That dam has broken. I didn’t break it out of anger. I melted it from within. I stood still long enough to feel the pressure build, and then I stepped aside and let the thaw come. Now my river runs wild through the canyon of my becoming—white water, alive, undeniable. I feel it rushing through places that used to hold only stillness. It speaks with the voice I once silenced in myself.
Tomorrow I enter the clinic, where someone else may try to chart my course, suggest detours or barricades—but the decision is already made. I’m not staying here. I’m not staying in this house, already marked for sale. I’m not staying in this town, where the walls remember more than I want to keep carrying. My river flows elsewhere now. And even if others try to dam it again, re-route it, contain it—I don’t let them. My water has found its power. It doesn’t need permission to flow.
I used to believe that longing was dangerous. That wanting more made me foolish or fragile. That moving on meant failure. Now I see clearly: some of us are rivers. We flood, we carve, we carry stories in our current. And we don’t belong in cul-de-sacs.
So I’m gathering my flavors, my grandmother’s lamb and apricots, my own recipes inked in the margins of memory. I’m ready for a place where I can cook what I love and be tasted in every bite. Not beige, not bland. Real. Deep. Spiced with truth.
You reminded me that rivers don’t wait for approval. They move because something calls them. And I remembered—I’ve always been moving. Even in the stillest places. Even when the current seemed quiet.
Now, I let it carry me. Toward whatever is next. Toward wherever I already belong.
I refuse to be "beige food for beige people". I lived in the suburban cul de sac where all the homes look the same on the outside and had the same fights happening on the inside.
I want flavor and color and texture in my life, even if it means discomfort. The diversity and the eccentricity and the variety in my world is what makes things ALIVE.