Be Like Water

This week, I've thought a lot about what this phrase means to me, and why I keep hearing it in various places, spoken by various people, for different reasons. Sometimes it is said with sage-like wisdom when hardships arise, sometimes in jest, sometimes merely in passing, but always with some meaning.

Water has the ability to create a devastating deluge or a feeble flowing finger, a mighty wall of power in the ocean or an elegant trickle at a mountain spring. To be like water is to always have direction, to react to situations and hardships accordingly, to glean silt or sand or leaves or debris from every billabong turn in the stream, but always having the ability to leave it behind, given time, lots of time. Water encounters obstacles, and either rises slowly, pooling to a crest to surmount or push that obstacle, or, when implacable, unmoving, water will always find a way around, flitting through cracks and crevices, filling every void with its satisfying coolness before moving on down the stream, clear of the obstacle. When boulders, or cobbles, or gravel doesn't comprise the streambed, water will seep, seep through the myriad of tiny tunnels between grains of sand, still traveling to its destination, always in the path of harmony, towards the freedom of a wide river, towards that immutable oneness of open waters, calm, and cleanliness. When, due to carelessness, water is polluted by someone passing, tossing garbage or soot, the stream will carry that burden, discolored, devoid of life for some time, but in the end, the entire stream will bear the burden of the waste, diluting the pain and carelessness until irrelevant and forgotten. If ever there is a rupture in a streambed, if dams are erected or rains pour too much to be satisfied by a winding channel, water cuts a new path, decisively straightening its course, the earthen streambed walls and grasses are uprooted with the strength of a bulldozer, plumes of topsoil and sediment cloud the clean riffles, but in the end, after time, the clay will settle, leaves filter out, grass will re-root, and a new streambed of bedrock and cobbles will form.

After thinking about these qualities of our lifeblood, I find the phrase more apt than ever. Just Be Like Water.