THE SOLUTION: WATER
I was recently given the opportunity for reflection, when a longtime friend asked me how I coped with life’s obstacles and disappointments. Most of the time, I’m not thinking about how I cope, I just do. I live my life and am so grateful for all the Good. I don’t stop to explore theories or belief systems, maybe because I’m old enough, and been through enough, to have landed on responses to those deep mysteries that I can trot out handily if needed.
This was one of those times, a trot-out time. And suddenly I recalled a vision I first had decades ago that became a paradigm for how to make the best of it, whatever the “it” is. How to cope. How to face hardship and loss. Because we all do. And we all have to have an answer in our back pocket to pull out in an emergency. Something to rely on that will pull us out of any dark place.
Mine is water. And that’s not an original thought. You can google “water quotes” and a hundred of them come up. Perhaps the most powerful one is from Bruce Lee: “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Observers have remarked that my energy on set, even in dire situations, is calm and unfazed. I don’t think that I’m water-aware in those moments, it’s just my default setting. Flow. No tensing up, no anger, no fear. (Though an extremely observant person will note that I may begin to blush. And I hate that, because I can’t control it.) If a producer is mad, or an actor is disturbed, or there’s an accident and a crew member is injured, the goal is to problem-solve in a method that is non-resistant but helpful.
The same goes for personal experiences, whether it’s a death in the family or concern for a struggling friend. If I were to get upset, that would make the moment about me, not about those I care for. And I don’t problem-solve as well if I’m upset. The same goes for dealing with my own issues, the ones that all of humanity deal with: feeling less-than, unlovable, incapable. When I find myself feeling like I’m trapped in a claustrophobic concrete prison where self-flagellating thoughts try to defeat me, I fight back against the internal demons with cooling water. I imagine a flowing river, one that cannot be stopped. But it can go around, or through, or over any obstacle. It can dispense with the issue, whatever it may be. And then the river can continue on its mighty way, energetically flowing as it is created to do.
If that momentary image can’t work its magic, then I know I have to meditate on it. Spend more time with it. Let it flow over me. And then I generally find that if I apply The Four Agreements (by Don Miguel Ruiz) to the problem, I’ll discover what’s really bothering me. Most of the time, it’s the “don’t take anything personally” axiom that goes to the heart of the matter. Then I know I must let that go, and picture in my mind the water, that healing water, washing that self-defeating thought away.
Being human means experiencing the glory of love and achievement, as well as the dungeons of defeat and deceit. We spend a lifetime learning to cope with both poles of extreme feelings, only to discover that everything is temporary and vanquishable if we have the means to do so. For me, it requires faith – that whatever happens, I will be okay – and the tool of the water metaphor. The dictionary says a “tool” is “anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose.” The water imagery is a tool that has worked for me not only to solve problems, but as a means to navigate our always fluid world.
I’m not a philosopher – not officially, anyway – but film and tv production has a way of throwing a director into a cauldron of craziness and hoping that he or she is sane enough, experienced enough, and cool enough to float through all that and still deliver an artistically superior product. Floating – that’s the key. After directing 250 episodes, I know that the solution to everything is to float in the moving river, being buoyant and confident that all is well.
And by the way, “water” didn’t work for my friend who asked me how I cope. But after talking about it, we discovered that “music” as a metaphor for life was meaningful to her. So all my high-falutin’ blather was not useful to her. But I hope it will be, for you!