A few years ago, I was taking a ferry across Puget Sound to a nearby island and looked into the water. As the boat plowed along, I had the surprising experience of gazing into a mirror. It was certainly a novel sensation as the water was not still but turbulently churned by the boat’s propellers. As I thought about it, however, it was true! We are fluid creatures! Although the percentage of water in a body varies with age and sex, on average, a woman’s body is about 55% water. The brain is 80 – 85% water, heart and lungs both 75 – 80%. Where was all this water in my body coming from? Some from Puget Sound no doubt! Water that was once Puget Sound, may very well have been in my body that day.
This experience inspired me to look into the origins of the water I drink daily. I learned water from Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean evaporates and drops as rain or snow on the Cascade Mountains. This rain or melting snow is stored in reservoirs. Eighteen percent of this water is eventually diverted to drinking water for Seattle. So, it’s true. Looking into the waters of Puget Sound that day, I was looking into a mirror. Maybe a droplet of water I saw that day now has a temporary home in the skin of my typing fingertip. It will eventually move on, perhaps evaporate through my skin, or it will leave my body through a tear or urination. The water droplet will continue on its never-ending journey of change and transformation. I drink so much tea, I imagine there is much more than one water droplet from Puget Sound in this body!
Does the Puget Sound water droplet temporarily become “ME” for its duration in my body or am I, unknowingly, “a Puget Sound water droplet?” This might sound silly, but I invite you to reflect a minute. At first glance, the body may appear fixed and solid, but looking a little more deeply, we see there is nothing fixed or solid about the body. The body is inextricably woven into Nature’s always changing world. Just as water inside the body is in a constant exchange with and the same as water outside the body, this is also true for earth and air. The earth, with the help of a vegetable seed, water and sunlight, converts to a food that can be processed by digestion to nourish the body for a time. Maybe once earth, a now nutrient helps replace the stomach lining which has a turnover time of three to four days. The oxygen outside the body fills the lungs on the inbreath, journeys in the bloodstream to be delivered as fuel for cells and then is eventually exhaled as carbon dioxide. Without any personal direction, this constant exchange has been occurring from the moment we were born, every one of us. I find this a wonderous miracle. Rather than a fixed and solid thing, this body is more like a constant dance of Nature’s elements, partnering for a time, transforming and moving on, continuously, as it is in this moment.
So how does this reflection help me as a person living with cancer? First, it fills me with wonder and helps me feel connected. Anything that helps me feel wonder and connection rather than routine interest and isolation brings a sense of ease. Sometimes this ease feels substantial, and other times, it’s just a tiny amount. I find even a tiny amount of ease to be a comfort. Looking at the snow on the Cascade Mountains or the waters of Puget Sound or even watching the rain fall, I am reminded that I am and always have been, intimately integrated into this wonderous world of Nature. Never separate.
I also find it an invitation to stop seeing “ME” as a firmly established bunch of cells encased in a sack of skin with a control center somewhere in my head attempting to control an uncertain and always changing situation, over which I have no control. As an alternative, my relationship with Northwest waters, the land and air loosens my attachment to a fixed identity as “ME.” How can I be a solid or unchanging “ME” when every second of every day, water and other elements are constant flowing into and through this body? I can let myself relax into this Dance, into this Mystery and rest in the present moment. What is this experience here and now? I can touch this Dance, this Mystery, in any moment. My mind shifts from a contracted, narrow view, attached to “I, me and mine” to something more open and spacious. This too brings me comfort and ease and, sometimes, contentment and joy.
Note: If interested, there are guided meditations on this topic called the 4 element meditation and 5 element meditation. I focused on water because of my relationship with it and touched on 2 others for simplicity in this essay. You can find examples of this meditation by doing a web search. One of my favorites is Guided Meditation on the 5 Elements in the Body by Jaya Rudgard on dharmaseed.org.