Water Wisdom: You Contain Multitudes

I am large, I contain multitudes.

~Walt Whitman

Water is the Universal Solvent, the Great Integrator, a connector, an agent of transformation. As she moves through watersheds, she picks up the chemical and biological signatures of all she touches, stirs them up in an alchemical stew, and bestows us with life. She contains multitudes; she contains all. 

In the same way water contains multitudes, so too do each and every one of us. What would it look like if you were to embrace and nurture all of you—not just those parts that fit neatly into a societal prescription or help you find “success”? Not merely the easy faces of you, but also the more challenging shadows that are difficult to examine? Not only the pieces of your experience, your talents, or your feelings that are easy for you to share, but the places that perhaps feel more tender, the talents that make you blush?

How would you show up in the world if you truly abided your soul? Where would your heart take you? What gifts would you cultivate and share? What work would you do? What words would you say? Who and how would you love?

So many of us hold back. We keep ourselves in check. We make excuses for why we don’t show up, for why we’re not living our soul’s desire. We follow tightly prescribed paths to some ill-founded definition of success. We fail to love and honor ourselves, and in doing so, fail to love and honor others. We shrink away from the best versions of ourselves.

I love this piece by Marianne Williamson, who wrote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world...

The path to this level of freedom requires owning and healing our shadow parts—those places where we harbor emotional trauma, ill-conceived beliefs, insecurities and pain—and integrating them with our light—those shining spots within that glow with clarity, love, and intention. It is from an integrated place that we can show up for and honor ourselves and others in deeply meaningful ways.

And, water provides us a beautiful model for the work of integration as she wends and churns her way through watersheds, at once eroding and depositing, fluid and fierce, finite in volume and impossibly infinite in forms of beauty, taking these seeming dualities and embracing them all to form the pulse of our planet. In working to unearth, own, and integrate our shadows, we empower ourselves to show up in our full integrity and shine our gifts to the world. I wish this for each and every one of us, particularly right now.