On Life and Water

Imagine earth without water. The soil, with no water in it and nothing growing on it, would be lifeless, dead, collapsed into dust, sand, clay or rock. In California's Central Valley where agriculture predominates and pulls water from the ground, this process is already beginning to happen. The earth used to be like a sponge, but where the groundwater has been sucked almost dry, like the Central Valley, the earth has collapsed and hardened. This is the process we call "subsidence."

Now imagine the air without water. Clouds provide a buffer from the heating power of the sun. Without them it would pour down with no mercy. Dry air would suck out whatever moisture it could find, wherever it could find it, and the noses and soft tissues of any being that lived would shrivel. There would be no sweet scents, since moisture is what conveys smells.

All of life, as we know it, cycles and recycles. From physical life to death and the breakdown of the body, to re-entry into Spirit. Then to the thought of life in a new body, to actual birth and living a new life through to death again - and on and on. Our own creations also follow the cycle of life: From the birth of a product through its use to its death, then its breakdown into physical components, then new ideas for new creations and the reuse of components in new products.

To humans, as creators of our own lives, water is our servant. We use it to grow crops and livestock, to cleanse and keep ourselves healthy, to stimulate ideas for products, and to transport those products. We use its cycles to helps us understand ourselves and to remind us that our own lives also work in cycles.

But if we abuse water, like masters have a tendency to do with servants, if we don't care for it and preserve it, we will end up destroying ourselves. We need the rain forests, the swamplands, the open rivers and lakes, the estuaries, icebergs, snow tops - water in all its natural forms we need. And so does the rest of life.

If, instead of commanding it, we could conceive of ourselves as a partner or an intelligent component of water's own rain and storage cycle, it might encourage us to be more respectful of what water can do and more careful of the way we utilize it.

With water, we thrive. Without water, there is no life. We must learn to value, conserve, and take care of the water we have.