Be Water

Water adapts better than almost anything we can experience in the natural world. Water is also extremely powerful regardless of the form it takes. Water knows how to stack bricks day by day. Over thousands, even millions of years, the formations water has formed are awe-inspiring today. From deep canyons like the Grand Canyon to smaller river deltas forming because of a blockage, the power for water to persist and create is immense. Water knows how to carry on and find ways to adapt to any circumstance, regardless of the challenge at hand. Time and adjustments are all water needs to find solutions, to seek out any nook and cranny to continue on. Water simply does what it needs to succeed.

"Water never complains, but always pushes back. Always. Drop a boulder in front of a stream and the water will simply flow around it, taking whatever opening the landscape will give or—when nothing is offered—patiently building up its resources until it rises to a height where a new gap is found. Flow like water. Never complain, but always push back.” —James Clear

We should want to be like water in our own lives. Instead of cowering or losing hope when challenges present themselves, we should become malleable like that little compound that contains two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule (H2O). We should go with the flow, always seeking a way around, a way through, a way to continue. By continuing to push forward we realize that not all obstacles are overcome instantaneously. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, or even years to find a breakthrough, that crack that allows the rest of success to push through. Over time, we will get there.

The ability of water to adapt and be malleable regardless of the external circumstance applies to both our mental and physical states. We should not be stiff and stuck in our ways. Roll with the punches. Adapt. Find ways forward. Always learn and always find other ways to do things. Rigidness is how things break. Rock, even mountains, as large and towering as they seem still lose the battle to water over the long run. Water never stops and never gives in, it simply finds a way. If we are stiff like the mountains, we will lose.

You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash.

Be water, my friend” — Bruce Lee