The Emotions of Water

Call it H2O, aqua, whatever – it all boils down to water, our liquid foundation of life. Think of a lake, a stream, a river, an ocean, a pond. Though highly diverse ecosystems, these places all depend on one source: water.

Water is the binding of life, a liquid web that brings everything together. Each waterbody has its own unique role that offers food sources, habitat, and an environment with its own flora and fauna. Ponds, for example, are often in marshy wetlands, and are homes for waterfowl and amphibians, and plants like cattails and rushes. Rivers are home to fish and rodents like beavers and muskrats, and, though not many aquatic plants grow in the fast waters, provide nutrients to trees with their silty banks when flooded. Oceans and seas provide habitat for fish, marine mammals, and so many more species, with salty waters that all sea creatures need.

Often overlooked, water is how we survive. It’s not exactly clear how long a human can survive without water, but it’s the basis of our existence – our body needs water to produce tears, sweat, and urine, and our internal organs, like the heart, brain, liver, and kidneys, need water to function properly. And yet we sip our clean, processed tap water without a thought, while in other parts of the world – and even Canada – people still don’t have access to the water that we use almost mindlessly.

We are from the ocean, according to modern science; our origins are from the sea, where billions of years ago, a tiny cell formed and was life itself. Now, we dump our waste in the oceans and complain when plastic and garbage washes up on the beach. Is this how we thank our original source of life?

Water is proven to have emotions – this is proven by labelling a jar with a word like “love” or “hate”. When studied through a microscope, the water actually appears differently with different words. With “love”, it is beautifully fracted, like a crystal or a snowflake. But with less positive words, it appears less pleasing to look at. This shows that water isn’t a mindless source of hydration, but more a being with a deeper understanding of things than we have realized. And our bodies are made up of 60 percent water…

Sometimes, in modern society, water is portrayed as emotion, such as sadness and grief. Ever seen a movie where it’s pouring rain during someone’s funeral, but when everyone is happy it’s sunny and bright outside? This can lead to labelling emotions like sadness and sorrow as “bad” or “weak”, and that being constantly happy means you are flawless. Toxic stereotypes in the media portray that men should be lustful, greedy robots, the breadwinners and the fathers. Often anger is the only emotion that is shown to be “okay” for men to reveal, whereas women are displayed as emotional housewives who keep everything in order. This is an unhealthy balance, as women are more than crying machines and men are more than angry Hulks. Water is the element of emotion and feelings, and I think that we should accept the parts of us that aren’t always happy or aren’t always perfect. In fact, crying is a way of cleansing and releasing, just like rain is to dry earth.

Snow, a staple of Canada’s cold and brisk winters, is water in a colder form. It cools the landscape and makes an often bleak, dead world look soft and new. This summer shows how desperately rain is needed and appreciated when our temperatures and our fire hazards rise. Our weather is shifting rapidly, put into a blender labelled “climate change” and poured onto the world in a mixture of floods, fires, storms, and heat – this is a normal process, the changing weather, but humans’ (specifically North Americans’) lifestyles nowadays have changed to an unhealthy shift to taking, taking, taking, and producing, producing, producing, causing the world to speed the weather-blender faster and faster.

Water is the blood of the earth, the sap of our planet’s heartwood. It is considered sacred in many different cultures – in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) water is one of the five elements of the earth (fire, earth, wood, metal, and water). The basic four elements, which most people in North America are familiar with, consist of water, earth, fire, and air. Scorpio, Cancer, and Pisces are all water-based astrological signs. And water is considered medicine for many people – staying hydrated will impact health and wellness. Personally, water is an element that I relate to on many levels, and as a pluviophile, rain is something that makes me feel safe and calm. Even my middle name is “Raine”!

As our icebergs melt, our sea levels rise, and our waterbodies are strewn with waste, the once-pristine, healing waters of our planet are becoming rare to find. Water is a renewing, cleansing, integral part of the cycle of life, and we need to realize that without water, we lose a part of ourselves. Water is something that we connect to on physical, mental, and spiritual levels. In spirituality, water represents the mysterious, calm, and powerful, and we can see this in nature, from the peacefulness of a lake to the torrent of rushing, strong water in a river.

What are the lessons we can learn from water? To take time to be still, yet to be fierce when we need to be. To cleanse and renew ourselves. To remember what we are all a part of, that the ocean of humanity is made up of tiny droplets of water; us, people, linked, connected, in a sea of humankind. That even though we may be different – a stream, a river, a waterfall, a marsh – we are still akin on a fundamental level, a basic interconnectedness that carries on throughout our lives.

So the next time you take a drink of water, maybe sit a while, study the liquid in your glass. This is more than just a drink – it’s a cleanser, healer, nourisher.