Element

Water is critical for life. It’s one of the build blocks of our bodies. Statement of the obvious: you literally die without consuming water regularly. Access to clean drinking water for millions of people (even in some of the wealthiest countries) continues to be one of the biggest health crises of the modern world.

Clearly water isn’t just water. It includes other additives like mineral salts and other elements. These additives can make the water more beneficial or more toxic.

But it’s not just the additives that create the condition of water. For example, stagnant water becomes toxic in part because it doesn’t move. Usually as water moves with gravity (like in a stream or a river), the flow removes sediment and other impurities (assuming more impurities aren’t added back in) along the way. It also aerates the water through the same agitation and movement. 

Additionally, the balance of life (like fish and amphibians as well as plants and algae) in a body of water can vastly impact its health.

What does any of this have to do with change?

Change is a key element of life. Like water, it is one of the building blocks of being human. While we may not always like it, change is an agent that creates energy and opportunities to grow.

The conditions of change are critical to how we respond and the likelihood of success. Change can invigorate or it can destroy. The presence of active change is an indication of good health. 

If you’re actively avoiding or resisting change, you need to ask why.

Bruce Lee; not really talking about water:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. 

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. 

Be water, my friend.

Ultimately, water is change.

Photo by Anastasia Taioglou on Unsplash