You Can't Push Water Or Life
Surrender instead.
The phrase “you can’t push the water” kept popping up in my thoughts.
I ignored it, admired it, wondered where it came from, and finally gave up and decided to explore what it meant.
I tried imagining pushing water. The internal voice was right—you can’t push water.
What can you do instead?
I used to be a fish, or at least that is what my dad called me. I swam everywhere. My favorite place to swim was the week we would spend every summer at the ocean.
This is where I first learned that you can’t push water. Instead, when a wave comes, you dive into it and feel the exhilaration of popping up on the other side.
Or you can ride the wave onto shore and experience the sensation of flying, if only for a brief moment.
But definitely, you can’t push that wave.
While pondering the water message, I watched our resident crows take turns bathing in the birdbath. They patiently waited on the rim while the bathing crows splashed and flapped.
They weren’t pushing water; they were playing with it.
We can freeze, drink, bathe, swim, play, and attempt to control water’s flow, but we can’t push it.
So what? What does it mean in life?
As the idea of not pushing the water kept pushing at me, I realized it was a metaphor for not fighting what life was bringing.
Aren’t all forms of fighting, and yes, I am talking about the game and business of war—pushing the water?
It’s impossible.
What if we learned to surrender instead?
Surrender doesn’t push water. It goes, literally, with the flow.
Instead of fighting the power of water or life, we can dive into it, ride it, splash it, bathe in it, play with it, or float, all to our benefit.
We can let ourselves feel the peace, joy, and exhilaration of riding the wave.
Surrendering is not giving up or becoming a victim.
Exactly the opposite.
We are in control of what is happening by accepting that it is happening.
We let the water—life—guide us to the best possible solution.
Del and I tried selling our house for a year while searching for one we would like more. We were surprised that no one wanted to buy our home. But we were even more surprised when we couldn’t find one better than what we had.
Have you ever sold a house? People have to walk through it to see it, which means periodically, I would have to leave the house and wait for the walk-through to be over.
It was hard for me to surrender to that, but I did, not always graciously, I admit.
One day, I came home at the right time, and they were still there, so I had to wait outside in the car.
I decided to practice surrender and not push the water. It was hard. In the half-hour I waited, I only managed to surrender for maybe a minute.
The outcome of even that tiny surrender? They bought the house.
Then, we had to surrender to the idea that we had nowhere to go. We decided to make it an adventure. Within a few days, I had many alternatives to choose from if we didn’t find a house in time.
A few days later, we both had the impulse to surrender to the idea that the sale would not go through.
In fact, we discovered that we would be happy to stay in our house, and that is what happened.
The sale fell through. We were happy. The potential buyers were happy.
We stopped pushing life to go where we wanted it to go and rode the wave instead.
Thinking we control life is as useless as trying to push water.
The power is in surrendering to the flow of life.
It’s easier when we understand that Life is always on our side and wiser than we are about everything.