My river analogy has a new current. I’ve said before that A is when you begin a career or school. Z is the end point, your departure, graduation, termination, or whatever else completes the experience. For that matter, A can be the start of anything and Z its end; in between A and Z the River flows with all sorts of changes and continuities mixed and mingled. In your life overall, all of these different categories of experiences blend together to tell the story of your whole life.

Here, then, is the new current–the start A point and the end Z point can also be a relationship, your time in knowing and being a part of another person’s life. Such a relationship can be formed within a larger and longer current, like your experience at a particular job or living in a particular community.

In thinking about the presence of multiple currents, of smaller currents flowing inside a larger one, I then begin to consider how one of them might gain a dominance over the others. One of the multiple currents can take on more power and prominence than the others. It may even be that the newly dominant current isn’t necessarily the longest one in duration. You work in a job for 20 years, meet someone there during that span, and though the relationship may not last as long as your work time, it possesses more power as a presence in your life during the shorter period.

What is it that gives one current more purchase than another? Why do some currents rise while others fall? I suspect that some of the most important features in your River have to do with explaining the rising and falling of currents.