What Good is a River if it Has No Mouth?

September 3, 2013

Imagine a river with no mouth. It rises in rainy highlands and then flows through a desert, where its waters all evaporate before they ever reach the sea. Is it not still a river?

See the water crashing down the mountainside! The river winds through piedmont valleys out onto the plain, where it cuts a craggy canyon.

At length, the river slows. It becomes placid or even sluggish as it trickles through muddy pools. And then the river is no more. Loose sand blows in its putative path.

Where did that mighty river go? It went nowhere. Certainly not to the sea. How absurd and meaningless! There’s no point in having a river if it doesn’t go anywhere.

Scholars say the river rose up to heaven. Miraculous as it sounds, there’s little doubt because evaporation is an observable, measurable fact.

Scholars say the river is reborn. Its vapor travels around the world and falls once again as rain in the highlands. Eternal reincarnation! But what good is that? Just to cycle endlessly, and still never getting anywhere. How absurd and meaningless!

If it has no mouth, is it really a river? If a person dies, does that mean they never really lived?

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