Heroes Not Zombies

When I took this photo of an Iris flower it was the shape of the water which caught my eye. It looks like a little angel with her arms stretched upwards to the left, and her long dress trailing downwards to the right.

At least, that’s what my imagination creates for me when I look closely.

Isn’t it strange that water can take such a shape? Perhaps not. After water will take the shape of whatever bounds it. Isn’t the shape of a river determined by the rocks and the earth over and around which the water flows? A constant process of co-creation between the flowing water and the solid earth.

That’s enough for me. Water itself, it’s shape shifting and constant flowing, it’s ability to hold a position for a while. All that fills me with wonder and awe.

However, there’s something else comes to mind when I ponder water – emotions.

Emotions are like water. They flow. There’s a clue in the name – e “motions”. It’s easy to forget that because in the midst of an emotional experience it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that, whatever it’s nature and intensity, it is temporary. Emotions don’t stand still. Like water, they arrive, we find ourselves immersed in them, then they move on.

Emotions, like water, can flood us. We can feel like we are drowning in them, overwhelmed with sadness, incandescent with rage, paralysed with fear, ecstatic with joy……

In the midst of the most intense emotions it can be hard to swim. But we can learn and we can practise. We can learn to breathe, to pause, to step back and to notice. We can learn to watch emotions flow past, as the water flows past in the river.

And there’s something else. Emotions can arrive like the rain, or a storm, or the flood waters of a bursting river bank. They can arrive, like water does, from outside us. Learning to see an emotion coming depends on understanding the situations which create them, and we can choose, at least some of the time, to create the situations or to leave them.

When we learn what brings us joy, we can create the situations and habits and experiences which bring us joy.

When we learn what brings us fear, anger, anxiety, we can learn how to be prepared, how to adapt.

We can’t live without water. And we can’t live without emotions either. They are a necessary part of our survival, an essential characteristic of being human.

So it pays off to learn about emotions, to become more aware of them, and to remember that they come and go, as water flows.