STOP PUSHING THE RIVER — PART 1
I remember when “don’t push the river; it flows by itself” was a pop-wisdom phrase on everybody’s lips. A hippie catch-phrase gone viral in the 1960s and 70s, it was likely to be used to browbeat somebody who was tense or anxious or downright scared and getting naggy behind it. Commonly, back then, the phrase usually kept company with words like “uptight” or “square” and prefaced shaming statements about being some kind of whiny stick in the mud. The river…