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, 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. - Bruce Lee
The truth sometimes hurts, especially if they both arrive at your doorstep at the same time. Coexisting is two truths and no lies, how two things can be very valid (and sometimes two very different things), but still live together in a peaceful way.
For example, the act of eating ice cream: it's so delicious and I think about consuming it often. But I do have high cholesterol and a frequent scoop of Chunky Monkey isn't great for my health. So these things exist together, and I sit in between the two. I yearn for the perfect balance of fats and sugars, and the numbers tell me otherwise.
This is an easily digestible example, or so they say; a pint of an obstacle. We probably have been in far more challenging moments of coexisting, but I'm not here to push anything other than a couple of scoops.
To flow between food for wellness and food for joy, has been an adaption of change which is new, foreign and uncomfortable to me... it seems like it will be a forever lesson the more I age. Instead of grappling the dairy, Bruce Lee recommends to try to be water.
Coexisting works because there is harmony between the two (or three, or four...) truths. There might even be a moment of grief, because it can be a challenge to balance them together. And that's where Bruce Lee's water captures a feeling of coexisting: water doesn't resist the river, it becomes part of it. Water effortlessly lets go, and so must we.
As years pass, I see how the flow of life is changing, an understanding that I have little control over the things that fill my life. And I'm not surprised if you've heard this before, we can only control our reactions to events, and not the events themselves. This has brought me closer to staying in the present: I'm learning to play with the water, be completely taken by the path, collide at hard obstacles, splash when something disturbs my surface, or find a place of peace in the still moments. All are true. All are me.
With the mindset of being water, we will never be in the same body of water twice, and that's such a good feeling. The liberation that movement brings us to a new place, each and every moment. We can be kind to ourselves knowing we always have a fresh start.
I am making sure I shift my paddle towards a sweet riverside cafe that serves a great chocolate sundae.
Love, Margaret
