Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.
I have always loved this quote, and its sentiment. I am a big fan of Bruce Lee, as a martial artist. As a man, he, like all of us, could have used some work. But, as a martial artist he was among the top of the game.
I was thinking about this quote the other day and realized it no longer quite works for me. We are all impermanent. We do not last. Even from moment to moment we are ever changing and in flux. Our thoughts race, our opinions morph. We are constantly taking in new information and adding it to the collection of data that informs our conscious processes. Our bodies are no more permanent, constantly in a state of growth and decay, hurt and healing, taking in of fuel and expelling of waste products. Our cells die, and mostly are replaced. The me writing this post is nearly 100% new material from the one that was just coming out of the newlywed stage four years ago. Down to a molecular level the coherent stack of biomass I call a body is in constant motion and change. Nothing that I feel that I am, will remain for very long. And, along side a mountain I will be for barely a twitch.
The struggle, for me, is not to be like water, but to accept that ‘water’ is all that I am. I am simply a form-set, or frame, for the current pile of biomass and thought-forms sitting at my desk, and that form-set is in constant flux. The body I once had was twice as large as the one I have now, by weight, and then some.
I am change, and I am changing. And, in that I feel such a tremendous power of potential that I cannot help but be awed. My thinking too often limits that great torrent of power to a small and petty shadow of what it could be. I need to learn to step out of the way, and let the great flood through, and be marveled at what it does, knowing full well that the actor in that mighty play is not me, but ME.
So, for me, the quote now is
You are water. That is all. Get over it.
