April 10, 2009
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like water
“You’re like water. Serene one moment. Turbulent the next.”
My friend said this about me the other day. And it got me to thinking. What is water like? Serene and turbulent? Well yeah but there’s more to it than that.
First off in most states, water is always flowing, always moving. It’s changing shape and form. It’s never quite in the same state as it was. Even when water often seems still, it’s a chaos of motion beneath with a whole world of secrets within. I don’t know if I have any hidden depths, but certainly my mind is always a wash with mutating, shifting thoughts and ideas.
Also if you think about water, when does it become still? Two conditions might result in that serene state.
The first and most obvious is when the water is undisturbed. That is when nobody is around and there’s nothing there. There’s nobody to disturb the serentiy. Nothing enters the water to break it’s otherwise still state. And when actions interact with it, they create ripples in the water, a momentary splash of chaos that then slowly dissipate until still again.
That’s certainly like me. I am most as peace when I am alone and without substantive distraction. And I often work to keep myself so, not taking note of many things around me so as not to allowing those things to impact me. Shielding against ripples in the pond as it were. And when chaos erupts, I force myself to stillness and calm, often, as it were by removing the obstacle or going off to be by myself until the ripples fade away leaving me exactly as I was before.
The other case of stillness is of course when the water becomes frozen. That’s happened to me too from time to time, when powerful emotions threaten, I can become cold and detached. I freeze and become impossible to approach until I work through the chaos. On the surface I might seem normal but that’s only because I’ve frozen all my expression of my inner self. I’m tranquil in those cases only in the sense that I am unmoved and unmovable. This is a protection mechanism of course a way to prevent the turbulence from resuming.
But then after a times of course I thaw and I’m back to moving with the flow.
Here’s another aspect of water that fits me. Water when flowing is constrained. It can only move along the shapes of whatever container it is confided to. A river musts flow along its designated course and no matter how much the music struggles it can’t break out of that pattern. It may be able to erode the edges of the river but in the end it will always end up in the same place. Certainly my life seems like that at times. I might rage and swell but in the end the patterns of my existence are beyond my control and I’ll end up whereever I was going to end up, no matter my will be otherwise.
Water is an interesting analogy for life. It makes me think.
Comments (3)
water is such a wide analogy. ^_^ I think this person might have been better off saying you are like the ocean… +the rest of their statement but then again the ocean can bring other analoyies too. hehe
interesting analogy. I’d say there’s a possibility for water to change course entirely, little by little it’s still possible to shift course over time. Are you relating your path of life to how we have little control over with what happens to us? Or are you saying your personality stays stable even after the turbulence?
@duckling8912 - yeah. I was thinking of my path in life primarily. Sometimes, it seems I tend to be sort of stuck along a course and unable to find a new path to something different. Or it feels that way to me. But also personality works too. I do tend to be pretty stable in demeanor and personality over time even if during certain turbulent bursts I might seem rather different than my usual self.
I agree you can adjust your course little by little, but if I yearn to travel along different terrain altogether, as water I think it unlikely unless I experience some sort of Earthquake or meteor like event or something similar.
@raindrops23 - yeah an ocean or a lake might have made more sense with that particular phrasing. But the word “water” sort of flows more and implies a lot more. At least it gave me more to think about! ^_^