Water
Water is where it begins, water is where it ends and yet so difficult to grasp.
Try to hold onto it and you feel your hands running through it. A life-giving source, these days it has become so much more. Access to unlimited clean water is a power we take for granted but across the world this isn’t a given. Caught between drought and floods. In our climate change age we’re learning to save the water, turn off the tap, avoid long showers, unnecessary showers, don’t waste, consider those that haven’t got, consider what you have, whilst you have it.
Even more so now, I cannot imagine my world without water, for what it means to me now: A place to swim, to meditate, and to rejuvenate. I take to the rivers, the lakes, the sea, I plunge in and draw breath when it is cold, emerge refreshed, always. A luxury.
For years, I took water for granted. For years, water was something I drank, from the tap (without considering the extraordinary in that), in bottles (without considering the implication of that), where I sometimes swam, indoors or outdoors. Then something shifted. I experienced a deep sense of grief in my life and at a loss I took to the water. Diving headfirst into cold water became my salvation and as I went numb I also began to feel again. And I began to feel the water in a different way to before and to understand how much it permeated my life and emboldened and embraced me.
Perhaps, then, I do not wish to redefine the meaning of the word Water, but to expand the word. Water is part of our lives, essential to the core of our very being and how we would suffer without it or with too much of it.
What does ‘water’ mean to you? Tell us in the comments below.
