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ナイヤガラ奈落に落ちて空に舞う
Niagara Falls
Falling into an abyss,
Rising to heaven.
SOSUI - NOBUYUKI YUASA
I’ve just finished Abraham Verghese’s colossal novel, The Covenant of Water.
It
was the title that originally took me in; water’s my favorite compound,
and “covenant” suggests a sort of spiritual accord, which speaks to my
relationship
with Nature.
When the author finally gets around to explaining the title—on page 706—he re-
fers
back to water’s continuity throughout the story’s unfurling, connecting
places, connecting people and families. And that’s got me thinking
about my beloved water in a new light.
Of course I agree with
Verghese’s take that water connects us. It does that most literally as a
medium of transportation. But also, since it makes up about 60 percent
of our bodies, water is something we all—every known form of life—depend
on for our very lives. It makes us, if not blood relatives, at least
akin by chemistry.
And one could say water unites us culturally. Its awesome
power—that contradiction of brute force and ethereal beauty—has inspired
human beings, since our genesis, to share the fascination through
literature, art and other creative expression.
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PERPETUAL NOTION
We
know that, aside from a few renegade hydrogen atoms escaping into the
atmosphere, not one molecule of water is ever lost in the hydrologic
cycle. The substance, from clouds to rain, to lakes and streams, to
rivers, to the oceans and back again to clouds, never diminishes. It
simply changes state.
So
a molecule melting from this ice cube in my lemonade might be the very
same molecule lapped up on the first known dinosaur’s, Nyasasaurus’s,
tongue 243 million years ago.
Incredible! But there's another, albeit related, angle on the oneness of water.
Never once during that odyssey would the boat
not be completely immersed in H2O.
RACCOON WALKS INTO A (SAND)BAR
Besides
that molecular perpetuity, water, at least in its liquid state, is also
what I’d call physically continuous. If one could follow a single drop
of it from a melted snowflake on the sun-kissed shoulder of Everest down
the mountain’s flank, I assert that there’s a direct, material
connection between each of that drop’s 1.67 sextillion molecules* and
every other molecule of flowing and pooling water on planet earth.
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Imagine
a nano-submarine, one considerably smaller than our water drop. A
nano-submari- ner could steer his craft through that drop and
into
all its sequential minglings into rivulets, rills and runnels. Then
through brooks, creeks and rivers. Next, through ponds and lakes,
and possibly back to rivers. And finally into
the sea.
Never once during that odyssey would our little submarine not be completely immersed in H2O.
This
means that, when a raccoon piddles in a river’s shallows here in
Minnesota / USA, that critter becomes part of this indivisible body of
water, its little stream literally linked into the universal stream.
(Unfortunately, so does the chemical plant spewing its toxic waste into a
drainage ditch.)
And, eventually, a molecule of either will show up in someone’s lemonade.
What if we and all those other organisms,
like water, are just a single, continuous thing?
A QUESTION TO PONDER
So
what does all this mean? What it means to me is that, as much as we may
think of all the various bodies of water clinging to Earth’s surface as
separate entities, there’s really only one entity, one body of water.
Among
the countless ways Nature informs our species, this one, too, poses a
question to ponder: What if we think of the entirety of life on our
precious planet as I’ve just described water? What if, despite our
best efforts to differentiate ourselves one from another and from other
forms of life, we and all those other organisms, like water, are just a
single, continuous thing?
This argument of our essential oneness
is nothing new. It’s already the stuff of religious doctrines,
environmental treatises and even—relatively recently—physics.
But
I’ve never heard it compared to this amazing, inseparable quality of
water. It illustrates that, as with distant links in the water cycle,
what happens to a destitute Gazan family whose “safe zone” was just
bombed by Israel, and what happens to a baby girl just born into a life
of peaceful privilege in the antipodal Tahiti are just as connected as the waters
of the Mediterranean Sea are to those of the South Pacific.
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They’re humanity's one and only hope
for survival.
NATURE’S TRUTH
This notion of the unity of life seems especially pertinent now, as once-egalitarian, world-aware governments worldwide choose to break off into their own little is-
lands of “populist” self-centeredness.
Including the United States, where around half of our voting population apparently
feels quite threatened by the idea that the interests of all human
beings might be connected. In fact, the politics of their “Trumpublican”
party is wholeheartedly committed to division.
Values
that have characterized the most successful cultures in history should
never have been politicized. Striving for communication, cooperation, compassion and
respect for our shared environment isn’t a judgement on folks who lack empathy or fear
government overreach. Kindness and generosity aren’t some touchy-feely utopia dreamed up by a “liberal
elite."
No, they’re a bit more authentic than that. They're humanity's one and only hope for survival.
So,
let us not, dear God, abandon these, the moral lessons taught in nearly
every spiritual persuasion just because they're espoused by our political rivals. Let us embrace Nature’s truth about our innate connections, and seek the
oneness—the wisdom—of water.
“We need to strengthen the conviction
that we are one single human family.”
POPE FRANCIS
*
Using something called Avogadro's number, the number of molecules in a
drop of water is calculated at 1.67 x 10⌃21—or 1.67 sextillion.
SOURCE:
ThoughtCo.com
