I aspire to be a river?

Sometimes, I have visuals that seem to play inside my eyes, although of course it is in the brain. If I close my eyes, I can focus on the activity that plays there: It is always movement. And this nearly always happens when I have been acquiring a new skill. In my younger years, after I started volleyball training, I would see balls flying back and forth in the typical volleyball trajectories. While learning touch typing, I would see the movements of the typewriter. (This was before the age of personal computers.) And so on... when acquiring a new skill, the signature movements of that activity would play out on the back of my eyes, as it seemed. Even with my eyes open I would be able to watch it, as if by shifting my focus, but more clearly with my eyes closed.

It very much fits the description of "intrusive memories" but was not trauma related. Though the experience itself was kinda disturbing. I am glad I was not driving while these things happened. Evidently this is the brain's way of acquiring a new skill at accelerated speed, by studying it even while it is not happening. So far, so good.

However, I get the same experience after seeing water move sand and pebbles. Since childhood, probably, certainly in my teens, I would go to the large stream on our farm when the weather was right, and disturb the water. I might place a stone in the stream, diverting the force of the water. Then I would just stand and watch the water shape its new course, moving sand and pebbles, undermining stones and moving them out of the way. It fascinated me. It still does, in my 40es. On a rainy day I watched an impromptu stream work its way through a sandy slope, moving the sand in its chaotic and yet strangely purposeful way. Afterwards, the image kept playing on my retina for hours. That's when it struck me that this was the same way my mind reacted when learning a skill. Does this mean that I was learning the skill of moving sand? Perhaps I secretly aspire to being a river?

Primitive peoples sometimes considered rivers to be small gods. I wouldn't go that far, but I can see them being similar to us on a very abstract level. Like us, the river is both a process and an object. It is continually in motion and yet tightly bound to its form. It needs to be replenished continually. It grows as it moves, and no matter the length of its course, it always comes to an end. It is obvious that we humans live on the very borderline between order and chaos. But so does the river. Perhaps my subconscious noticed these similarities before I did?