Not every river needs to reach the sea... When I first heard about the Okavango River

Not every river needs to reach the sea...

When I first heard about the Okavango River in Africa, I thought, “How can a river end in the desert?”

It begins in the highlands of Angola, flows through Namibia, and continues into Botswana.

But unlike most rivers in the world, it doesn’t empty into an ocean.

It doesn’t end in a grand delta by the sea.

It never touches the shore.

The Okavango simply disappears into the sands of the Kalahari Desert.

Yet before it vanishes, it creates one of the greatest spectacles of life on Earth — the Okavango Delta.

There, between water and sand, channels, islands, and floodplains emerge, sheltering lions, hippos, zebras, elephants, and hundreds of other species.

All of it, right in the middle of a desert.

It’s as if nature were whispering that not every destination must be grand in the eyes of the world — sometimes it’s enough to be fertile along the way.

◆ The Okavango doesn’t flow to impress.

It flows to nourish.

It doesn’t end with fireworks — it ends in silence.

But even in that quiet ending, it gives life.

And maybe, like the Okavango, many of our own journeys don’t end where we once imagined.

Yet along the way, they may sustain what’s most precious.

Because the true meaning of a path lies not only in where it ends —

but in who it transforms as it flows.