By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes I’m very much aware of how much water I’m comprised of.

When I began this post, it was raining again, and I had an odd sense of inexplicable relief. I had spent the previous night painting malformed moths with watercolors, struggling with the shapes, but delighting in the relationship between pigment, water, pulp. Last week I dipped my feet into Lake Erie, the biggest water I could get to quickly. And this weekend, my Love and I greeted the sun rising over Lake Huron. I have been so drawn to water in these recent days I have become almost overwhelmed by it.

When we think of what it means to be human, we must also think of what it means to be water.

I think of the Great Lakes, their depth, churning toward shores without really knowing how or why. I think of what I used to know about being human, years ago, when I thought I understood my history, and when I was naively confident that I knew the general shape of my future. Then suddenly, these understandings and beliefs dissolved. I think of the paper crane in a puddle, that image from a story, maybe one that I wrote, and the way water returned it to pulp, and then nothing.

Sometimes our past is not what we thought was, and we have no easy path back that allows us to remember what we were before. And sometimes the future we thought we were building simply dissipates, revealing that it was never really a constructed thing, it was only vapor, which has now evaporated.

Life does that sometimes, reminds us that we are water, and we are churning, and we don’t really know where we came from or where we are going but we are going nonetheless, toward shore, toward sky, moon, toward ourselves, maybe.

I’ve stumbled across a lot of incidental philosophy that instructs on the moment, the now, being all that we have, all that we can be sure of. My reaction to this concept is always a dual one: I feel simultaneously the logical truth of it, and I feel a hint of dread. I have always wanted to know the future, its contours, and always used to feel that I understood how the past has shaped me. Now, though, I see the present, less like a moment and more like a vast lake. We churn with the waves, toward somewhere, and from somewhere.

And despite all the mysteries of past and future, the water knows itself anyway. Molecule by molecule, it understands its selfness.

I forget sometimes, forget the understanding of self that I possessed before I was conscious of experience or memory, forget the identity I already lived when emerging into this world. Maybe that is why I’m so drawn to water, despite being a poor swimmer. I’m not seeking sport, but self. Sometimes it feels like I’m always trying to remember that me, the one emerging from water into air, a whole self, even though this world had not yet imprinted me with experience. We are always whole, always were. Why is it so difficult to remember that sometimes?

Our true self has nothing to do with anything that ever happened to us or anything we ever knew or anything we have ever hoped for. How ridiculously easy it is to wrap that being in thing-ish notions that feel real, the things we tell ourselves about ourselves. I am this quality or that, how many times do we listen to ourselves, watch our words forming apology shapes as we admit our perceived flaws. Why do we let ourselves conform to those notions? I believe it is because we have an understanding, however misshapen it may be, of what the world expects. How presumptuous to assume that the world knows better than we do how to be ourselves. What if in our efforts to fit, to appear less alien, we appear more so? Worse, what if, in our efforts to fit, we become less of who we are? I am not sure if it is possible to lose that sense of our true self entirely, but I do believe it is far too easy to drift further and further away and make it harder and harder for ourselves to return.

Maybe the trick is learning to know water in all its forms. Maybe if I hold my breath and dive below, I can see who and how I was long ago, and not so long ago. Maybe, surfacing, I can hold my focus long enough and see a little of the future. Not all of it, all at once, in grand cloud formations, but glimpses, in the water droplets captured and rising in the air when I splash with joy in the pink sunrise.

As for the present, we live in a world of uncertainty. I know that many introspective folk like myself consider their understanding of their own identity, their relationship to past and future versions of themselves. Personal transitions lend urgency toward such explorations, and journeying toward self in this way during the times we live in can feel chaotic and confusing. So, embrace and thank and love those people in your life who have the ability see the self you are seeking, even when you cannot. [Thank you, as always, my Love]. And let us also allow ourselves to be embraced for the same reason. Our clarity of vision can be as much of a boon to others as theirs is to us.

Be open to and available for the love that is being presented to you. Let us focus and see through each other’s endeavors to mimic what the world expects, and instead see the people in our lives truly. Let us give and receive that gift, and be thankful, and bold, and authentic.

Love, Cath