Life has a way of suddenly changing its course, waking us up from our slumber. We think we have all the time in the world, then one day there is very little left. Or none.
We’re at the Huka Falls where the Waikato River, 100 metres across at its widest, dramatically narrows into a canyon that’s barely 15 metres across.
The abrupt bottleneck in New Zealand’s longest river creates a thunderous crush of water flow, as much as 220,000 litres per second.
Looking at the white foam and angry froth from the safety of the bridge, it’s easy to get swept away by an endless stream of thoughts: all our hopes and our fears. All the uncertainty about the future.
These are difficult times. Some would argue it’s always a difficult time. Perhaps none harder than the ones we give ourselves.
As Bruce Lee once advised: “Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
We are what we need to be. We are who we are, where we are, and that feeling? That’s pure joy when we realise we are free. We have always been, if we give ourselves permission to be.
Be water, my friend.