You Find Lessons in the Strangest Places — When You Look
“Puddles”
I have been on vacation all week, which has allowed me to spend a lot of time with my two year-old daughter. Yesterday, we were playing a game that she likes to call “puddles”. The game consists of me turning on our hose and letting it loose on our driveway. To the untrained eye, our driveway appears pretty flat for most of its width, until it slopes down toward our neighbors’ yard. It appears that way, but once water begins running down it, you can begin to see that such flatness — such uneventfulness — is not the reality.
In reality, there are several crevices where water ends up traveling, which reveal that the surface is more uneven than meets the eye. But beyond water’s ability to reveal what is not superficially noticeable is water’s intense perseverance. It is infinitely agile and patient. When I put my foot in the way of the larger preferred path down the driveway, the water collected around the sole of my foot and then slowly diverted.
I continued obstructing it, even kicking the collected pool back toward the hose from whence it came. Once the momentum that I gave it was exhausted, the water proceeded to come back in the same way toward my foot. One of us was going to give way, and I quickly realized that it would not be the water.
Now, it was a hot day, and sunny. My driveway is blacktop. So arguably, I could best the water by merely spreading it around and letting the hot sun evaporate it. But calling that a win would be shortsighted on my part.
The water would appear to have left behind our duel, but it would continue its journey as vapor — using the leisurely momentum of the atmosphere to continue its journey. It would then end up somewhere else, perhaps its initial target of the neighbor’s lawn, and the soil underfoot, as falling rain tomorrow.
Here’s the Thing About Water.
Water never relents. It yields, but it never relents. Even when it appears to have relented, and to be still, it is prepared to move — at a moments notice, quickly through a newly opened path. Water also easily gives way. Whatever obstacle is placed in front of it — it stops in its path.
When large rock is dropped in a body of water, it moves itself briskly to accommodate it — no resistance, no struggle. Intense movement for seconds — maybe a minute. But then, serenity prevails. The wind may drive it to and fro, but in the end, it is serene once again.
Water is patient. Wherever water is going, it will get there eventually, and it proceeds there without ceasing.
So…
So what does this mean? Honestly, there’s a lot of things it could mean.
In one way, reality is like water. It flows where it’s going to flow. It carries everything along with it, whether those things want to go or not. Fighting it is largely futile, but leveraging it can yield tremendous power.
In another way, we should be like water. Loose and fluid enough to conform to our environment, but persistent and strong enough to carve out our own space and get to our intended destination.
I don’t know. You tell me. I just thought it was interesting.