The Lily Pond
I have discovered that you can group people into one of two categories–those that literally ‘change’ when they are around water, and those that are unaffected by it. I am in the first of those categories and I plan on living near some body of water someday because I am a water person; to see it, to hear it, to be near it changes my psyche and stirs something in me–I feel relaxed, I feel peaceful and I feel that everything will, after all, be all right.
When I was going through the healing process of my aforementioned collapse in my 28th year, water unexpectedly played a large part. Up to that point, I did not know that I possessed this link to water as I had never come into contact with my need for it. Ask most any person who studies the meaning of dreams and they will tell you that water is a very common symbol of the unconscious. Many of our symbols are personal and unique to our experience in life, but water seems to be an archetype for the human race. During this period of my life in which I was putting myself back together, water played a prominant role in my dreams almost every night for a couple of years. When I think back to that period of healing, I envision myself immersed in a large body of water, within sight of land but far from it, treading water to stay afloat and growing strong legs that would one day take me back upon solid ground where I could begin a new life.
Being near the ocean always reminds me of the comforting truth that the well-being of the world far outweighs whatever seems wrong with it at the moment. And whatever seems wrong with me and so all-important at the time is clearly temporal and unknown to this eternal force that goes on churning and moving day in and day out.
When we were in Hawaii this last June we visited a beautiful Hindu temple on the island of Kauai. The monks there had built their own garden of Eden, blending their cultivation in with Hawaii’s natural beauty. The Lotus being a significant Hindu symbol, they had attempted to build a lotus pond. The pond was fed by a natural running stream in which tilapia swam, and the lotus being a favorite food of the tilapia, no matter how hard they worked on building a robust lotus pond, the fish devoured it. One day one of them had a revelation–if the fish were not hungry, they would not eat the lotus. The monks commenced to meet every hunger need the fish had by other means and after some time, the lotus pond was beginning to blossom and thrive.
The painting above was first inspired by that beautiful and peaceful lotus pond and it is a reminder to me that the peace and beauty we experience in our lives sometimes must be found in ways that take some unconventional thinking. Sometimes when things seem impossible, it’s just that I’m looking at it from one angle and can’t see it any other way. Just because the tilapia are eating the lotus doesn’t mean that lotus is all the tilapia eat…
I wholeheartedly agree in your observation that some people are moved, spiritually, by the presence of water – especially the ocean. I was never aware of this subconscious reaction until I moved to Monterey, CA while serving in the military, and from that point forward I have posessed a constant longing to be near the sea. Like you, I envision myself living near the ocean at some point as a means of satisfying this urge. Until then, we must make due with lakes, rivers, streams and long showers… Take care!