Water
A few weeks ago I was on vacation with my family in Montana. Big skies, fresh air, mountain ranges under sheets of rain and rolling thunder. I am blessed to be able to visit there once every year.
I have a hard time relating with my family, having different values and being more emotionally-intuitively driven than their more concrete, practical dispositions. Often the frustration becomes overwhelming as I find myself involved in the old dysfunctional patterns. But when there's water nearby (the cabin is on a lake), I have a wonderful means of refreshing my perspective.
The water there is fresh, crisp, clear, and cold. It's the kind that when you're getting in for a swim, and the water comes just below your belly button, you cringe at the thought of going in any further. So usually I just dive in, all at once. It takes a strange kind of split-second act of courage, one in which I just ignore all the instinctual no!'s and just go for it.
The sensation as my mind and body registers what I've just done, shooting through the iciness and the rush of every inch of skin, is both unbearable and exhilarating. Sometimes I scream into the water, releasing my stale frustrations in catharsis and a will to make most of the momentary discomfort. When I surface, I shake the water from my face and take in my surroundings as my body adjusts to the temperature.
Everything looks different from the water. I feel my surroundings more as if I were a part of them, organic and wholesome in my own right. The mountains seem more real and immediate, promising of congruent dreams and forgotten memories within myself.
I was born with a relatively mild, though difficult form of muscular dystrophy. In the water I can do many things I cannot on land - jump, twirl around, do somersaults, and flail my arms in freedom. It becomes a form of expression for me; a dance that allows me to release a form of myself normally so hidden and so ashamed. I feel one step closer to home.
Once a few years ago, I spent several hours in the water swimming laps (in my own, half-doggy-paddle sort of way). Some kind of work happened then that is difficult to describe. I had spent the entire year before in a facility being 'treated' for depression, and there were many hurts as well as inspirations that needed integration into my being.
I brought to my mind's eye all sorts of visions from my past and my imagined future, weaving my attention back and forth between them and my present with all its watery caresses, sunset and vale of green. As the hours passed and I grew steadily more tired, a euphoria steadily grew in me. I intuited a beautiful pattern to my life, not one that I rationally understood as much as implicitly felt and experienced as a subtly shifting sequence of meaning juxtaposed with the memories, both past and future, a common thread shining through them all. I knew it wasn't a mistake that I was still alive.
That night I settled into an old chair and donned my headphones as the rest of the family went to sleep. The normally anxious, hypervigilant part of my mind was quiet and my body in a total state of relaxation. I put on an album that I hadn't heard in a few years and sat back, letting the sound wash over me. The beauty of it took my breath away. Every note was exquisite, every pluck of the guitar an adventure through some uncharted space of myself.
Water symbolizes the deepest parts of our psyche, the gentle flows of which can wash away worry, loosen stagnant elements of ourselves and return them to the concourse. It serves us outwardly in every day of our lives and is the simplest life-giving force one could ask for.
So drink it, swim in it, bathe in it (with moderation) - develop a relationship with water. Maybe then, knowing fully its spiritual as well as practical qualities, we will be impassioned to preserve it, to share it, to integrate our sensual elements and channel it towards further use.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks