We are liquid. It’s tempting to think of ourselves as more of a solid: the images abound, after all, which push us towards that state as an ideal. “Nerves of steel,” “solid as a rock,” “iron man” and the like. But that is not who we are, even though we may draw as much strength from stones as from water.

Stones do have great lessons to give, and I have learned much from their silent ways. Still, it’s not granite and gravel flowing through our veins, and to have a heart of stone is a cliché of insult, not ideal. No, we are liquid, as much as a glass of water is, as malleable and also as fragile—as prone to apparent disappearance. We flow through the world, at our best. At our highest we are closest to being a river.

Water has taught me more than stones; more than cities; more than paperbound volumes ever could. It has taught me ways of seeing our collective spirit and our individual selves which are of profound practical value. It has also given me hypnotic reflections of the world and its colors which are endlessly kinetic, perfectly real and abstract at the same moment. Water is calming in its constant rushing noises, as well. It’s the only soothing hurry I know.

The image of the collective spirit as a vast ocean has been a recurring image for founders and followers of many spiritual paths—all of whom found it from the ultimate source: the nature from which each of those paths rose. All spiritual paths are rooted in the same water and the same creatures that first crawled onto shore from it. No surprise, that many should reach back to the source for vision.

It takes no belief in deity to see that same vision: only an observation of water and its nature. Water doesn’t vanish from this planet: it merely changes form from salt water to rain cloud to river to steam, fog to sweat to dew, lake to ice cube to misty breath. It’s in constant change, dividing, separating, merging, traveling, vanishing and reappearing in the limited view of the naked eye. Yet its underlying constancy is timeless.

The associated metaphor which crosses boundaries of faith compares our lives to waves on that great ocean of life and spirit: each life rises and falls and returns to the mother ocean without the water vanishing.

Seeing this way, I grasp the view which recognizes neither birth nor death; instead recognizing spiritual continuance in other forms—other waves rising after the fall of the previous.

That vision is most easily felt at the edge of the ocean, on the shore of the greatest waters we’ve been given to borrow as metaphors. There, no far edge is visible, and at the near edge the waves keep their ceaseless rhythm without ever a whisper of exhaustion.

Not all of us have access to those oceans, though, across vast landlocked distances. Gaining water’s perspective is like gaining the perspective of the stars: any connected resemblance will have to do. We all have water in our lives—if not, we’re quickly banished from the living, and in our own way return our moisture to the world. At every drinking fountain, puddle, drop of dew, river, glass or faucet, that connection to the one great ocean and its comforting timelessness is available.

It’s small waters—rivers and lakes especially, but even urban trickles and puddles—from which I’ve learned the most about how to be in the world. It’s there I’ve learned how to follow nature even in places where it seems distant. So many times I’ve paused, to admire the way water lives.

Water always finds a way, with its delicate balance of persistence and flow. Its path and goal are always clear and simple—to move downhill towards the sea—but its moment-to-moment journey shifts instantly and endlessly, without heartache, according to the landscape with which it’s presented. Water always follows a course towards a clear, direct goal without needing to resort to straight lines. The best path, it knows, is not the shortest or simplest; but the one along which the flow is most natural. It’s in the curves and switchback changes—in silent pools balanced with shouting rapids—in which its beauty lies, as well as its success in fulfilling its purpose.

If a rock impedes its flow, water simply pours around it. If going around is first impossible, it builds up until it spills over or moves the rock. If cold becomes extreme, it simply freezes and waits for a thaw before resuming its motion, content with the earth’s schedule of seasons. If heat becomes too intense, it rises without resistance into the air, particle by particle, absorbing itself without demand into the atmosphere until it comes down in some other form, some other more hospitable place.

As long as it can gather enough for visibility, too, water’s nature is to reflect the beauty of the world around it. The reflections it creates aren’t bent on exactness, that delusion of “accuracy”; instead, water uses whatever colors are given to return something new and beautiful which is uniquely its own, and also directly of the world around it.

How I wish we could each find such creative grace! How I wish we could all move so easily! When I’m confronted with obstacles in my life, internal or external, I ask myself one question: What would water do? Would it go around, would it build to push through, wait for a thaw, accept the heat and rise to come down in some other place? I draw upon water’s stressless, adaptable persistence. What would water do? I take a sip from the nearest drinking fountain, glass or faucet to draw that water and its ways deeper inside me. What would water do? In the answer to that question is inevitably the answer to what direction I should take, given the obstacle—and also the beauty I should try to reflect. What would water do? We should know. We are liquid.