Righting a Past Wrong: In Praise of Water!

Thoughts from the side of the house…

For many years now, I regularly reflect on living how to life without any regrets. So after spending the Spring working and watering plants in our yard, tonight I’m convinced that I will live to regret something if I don’t take a minute and correct a mistake I made more than once in my life. I think I owe someone an apology and that someone is…

Water.

Margy and I once had dinner at the restaurant pictured above. La Pergola. At the time, it was considered to be among the finest and most expensive dining experiences in the world. (For the record, we were guests of someone.) White gloved servers, seven courses, five hours, several napkin changes, a different glass of wine with every course.

And it all began with a water menu. Yes, you read that right, a water menu. Today they supposedly boast of 29 different water options from around the world, but when we were there they were offering even more. They had Italian waters, foreign sourced waters, specialty waters; the list went on and on. Of course I said nothing at the time since we were with beloved friends and I would not want to seem ungrateful for their benevolence. But truth be told, I thought the whole water menu thing was pretentious, absurd and slightly farcical.

So let me say this now: I was wrong. I’m sorry water. I just didn’t get it. I was being an oaf. A boor. A bumpkin.

It’s embarrassing to do this publicly, but I’m determined to address this issue head on. It is a great mistake to so vastly under appreciate water like I have done. I have ignored it. Been indifferent to it. Taken it for granted. I blame it for bad things, but never credit it for good things. Well that’s going to change, starting tonight! Here is a list of why water is totally awesome.

First of all, it is the rare element that can be a solid, a liquid and a gas. Think about that for a moment. Then it has even another form. Snow. Snow is sort of a liquid, but sort of a solid. (And snow is utterly magnificent, but that reflection is for another day.)

Water gives life to all plants. It is essential. It gives life to all animals and human beings too. No wonder it is so refreshing to drink on a hot summer day. When you drink it, you’re actually drinking a magical life-potion that makes you stronger and healthier.

It can clean things. I just rolled up a dirty hose using a hook attached to our house. I didn’t like how it was all dirty so what did I do? A quick blast of H2O and VOILA! It’s suddenly clean! Haters might say that I’ve simply replaced the dirt with water and now I have to deal with a hose that’s all wet. Well I say to those haters that YOU are all wet! In a short time the water will magically disappear. But the dirt NEVER just magically disappears!

That’s the CRAZY thing about water. It travels around invisibly, like magic.Its evaporation feature gives it an amazing ability to simply disappear and float into the sky, then travel a hundred miles or more, gather itself and come back down again in a way that spreads itself all over the place. When it rains for only an hour, my entire yard gets an nice even distribution of it: so much more effective than having to spread it around myself! And don’t forget about all the convenience of rain. Rain comes down mostly in a gentle spray that doesn’t damage the plants like I often inadvertently do when I’m spreading it myself. What a cool feature: a built in self delivery system!

It also self cleans. When it gets dirty it can either go into the sky or go into the ground or some kind of plant. Going into the sky cleans it pretty well, but going into other stuff can sometimes do the trick.

Think of the beauty of lakes, rivers, oceans, streams. What do they all have in common?

Water.

Water is beautiful in so many ways. It creates interesting places. Here’s a question. If there were no water, what would we call the Hawaiian Islands? The Hawaiian Forest? The Hawaiian Mountains? That just doesn’t work for me.

Water can be entertaining. Last night, I was spraying some flowers and the floodlight lit the stream. I stood for minutes watching the droplets glisten as they shot towards their target. Then I shot them up in the air a little bit. Then I shook the nozzle back and forth. It was beautiful. Beautiful, I tell you!

Next consider its comparative utility.Think of life under the sea. It doesn’t need air. But life over the sea still needs water! Score one point for water right there.

How else would we easily dispose of so much waste? We use water in our commodes to carry away our mess, yet water never complains about it. Think about how we’d have to do it WITHOUT water. Not a pretty thought!

And water is fun. We swim in it and throw it at each other and put on the sprinklers in our yards just so kids can run through it.

Consider how fun it must be live totally immersed in it. As creatures that do not live immersed in water, we are always looking up in the sky thinking about how cool it would be to be able to fly. Just think, if we lived in water, we could just swim upwards – sort of like flying!

I’d also like to say that water showers are amazing. A warm shower after coming on from the cold during the winter months is like nothing else. So warm and tingly and soothing! A cool shower on a hot summer day can be so refreshing!

What helps clean my hair and my teeth and rids me of my nasty body odor? Water.

Where would we be without this amazing wonder substance?

Like all powerful things, it can also be abused. It can destroy. Too much of it can actually kill the things that it enlivens. It can make things erode and rot and rust and fall apart. But I’ll have to save that reflection for a rainy day. Today I’m not going to look at it like the glass is half-empty. I choose to see that the glass is half-full!

Water refreshes me on a daily basis. I literally drink some every day.

So I apologize to you, Water, for not appreciating you enough. I have been a fool. You are most excellent and worthy of praise. My previous attitude is now just you under a bridge.

And if anyone is still reading this all the way to the end (and I question the sanity of anyone who is), let me conclude by pointing out what perhaps may be water’s finest attribute…

You can’t make scotch without water.