Water Works

I had a teacher, many years ago, who often expounded on the virtues of water, and advised me to cultivate these virtues in myself.

To be like water.

Depending on conditions, water can change its state of being. It can be soft as steam or hard as ice.

It can be invisible, hanging ever-present, though unseen on a sultry summer night.

It’s gentle but persistent enough to wear away stone with its caresses.

Water has no particular shape so it’s free to assume any shape necessary. You can pour it into a cup, a thimble, a shot-glass or a mold of any kind, and it assumes without protest whatever shape it needs to adapt to that environment.

My teacher told me, “There are a million ways you can go down, Jack. And if you could anticipate and prepare for even half of those, you’d be a fuckin’genius. And you ain’t no fuckin’ genius.”

You never know what shape you’re going to need next. Since you can’t possibly prepare specifically for every possibility, the only thing to do is prepare generally for all of them so you can adapt as necessary.

Like water.

As a result, water knows no obstructions. It flows along in a river, for example, conforming to every fractal thereof, and should there be a rock in its path, it unhesitatingly adapts, flows around it, and continues on its way, undaunted.

Water can be a life-saver or a life-taker.

It all depends.

Your spirit, too, is like water.

Imagine water in a pond on a calm day.

When the surface is flat as glass, it acts like a perfect mirror, accurately reflecting images of what is – and only what is. Not what WAS or what will be. It neither anticipates nor lingers on any images. What’s there is there, what isn’t isn’t.

That’s important.

“Half the shit you worry about, ain’t gonna fuckin’ happen, Pal,” he told me. “And the other half, you can’t do shit about, anyway. You might as well just be cool.”

If you throw a stone into that calm pond of glass, or the wind comes up, or it starts to rain, all the reflections are distorted. Sometimes so much that you can’t recognize at all what they are even reflections of.

Your emotions are like the rock, the wind, the rain.

Fear, anger, love, hate… all those things will put ripples on your pond and prevent you from reflecting images of things as they really are.

But when your spirit is calm, you can perceive things as they are, according to their true nature, and act appropriately and adequately toward them.

At least, that’s what the fortune cookie said.

sj