A stream flows by. Water. Universal solvent. Symbol of everything that is. When I put a toe into the water it slides around me as if I don’t make a difference. Untold numbers of individual water molecules. They flow by and pay no attention to my fabric. Which one is cold? Which one is hot? I have no way of being able to distinguish on that level.
And yet my head sits up above and declares, “water.” I have assigned a name to this fleeting phenomenon as if that will make sense. Something I have also come to know as “me” assigns the meaning of water to this constantly changing liquid. If I do not choose to put my toe in it, it is still there. I still refer to it as water. Now my eyes look at it. They slightly change the meaning of this substance. Water. It is still there. It still flows by. It still is something that really is not that well defined. I shut my eyes.
Now my ears take up the slack. I hear, “water.” I hear it touch the rocks. I hear it drop. I hear it flow. Water. I stuff my ears with my fingertip.
I smell, “water.” It trickles into a new opening in my senses. I smell the rain. I smell the tumble. I smell the other changing rocks and soil that the water passes over. “Water.” It still flows. It flows even when I try to ignore it.
I could go on with the senses. Taste. I can taste water but I still don’t know what it is except what I or others call it. Water. And each definition comes back to a sense and they all flow back to something called me. And even that me changes.
Amazing isn’t it. Water changes. I change. You change. The universe changes. Everything changes. Definitions change. Is there anything that remains constant? Perhaps the amazing coincidence that everything is constantly changing.
I sit beside the stream. I suspect we all react. Some of us try to open ourselves to more and more sensual inputs. Some of us shut down the inputs. We claim overload. Some of us discriminate and select certain things to avoid or seek out. Some of us become attached. I am attached to the taste of chocolate, the taste of warm bread; an old blues riff on a guitar, words strung together searching for a meaning. I am attached to sitting quiet and trying to pretend that I can do that too. I am attached to certain people who flow and have flowed over, around, and through me. I admit it.
Think quietly for just a moment. What is the stream that flows at your feet?
Right now, I review the flow of words above. What am I trying to realize? What am I trying to suggest? What is it that I see as a dam in the stream I watch? I can produce a list of thousands that I am attached to as being a hindrance in the flow of the stream.
Water is an amazing thing. Gallons have coursed by at my feet and I’ve changed to. Time to change the water.
G
