The Trouble With Water

We like water.  It's so luxuriating (though no cost may be involved) to immerse one's self in say, a sparkling, clear, blue-green lagoon surrounded by a tropical atoll on a beautiful, warm and sunny day. Gulping clean, cool water to slake a powerful thirst: this too is most desirable and lovely for the easily discomfited human body and soul (the physical pleasure is such that it can be indistinguishable, if the deprivation has been of such duration and intensity, from a spiritual "high"). Of course, water's attraction goes considerably beyond likability. We may very well have emerged from the depths eons ago, and so fundamental to life, and in so many ways, are the oceans, streams, lakes, rivers, rains, etc. that we enjoy, that one would be equally too blase to "like" water as to casually acknowledge a fondness for the air we breathe.

Nonetheless, water, like atomic energy, food and sex, can be taken for granted, abused or in many cases, is abusive towards us. Obviously, flooding comes quickly to mind as one of life's recurring miseries for many challenged by a slightness of elevation of geography and/or one's residence's climate's propensity for precipitation. Then too, there is the "nuisance of drowning", as some wag put it.  Something so lovely that again, embraces and envelops our smoldering corporeal selves with a deeply soothing refreshment on a blistering August day can deliver us to the promised land in an instant, choking and suffocating our oxygen deprived lungs with way too much of its "good thing" qualities.

Something as highly prized as any other natural resource that can enrich a man, water has been the driving force behind many a human endeavor both noble and perhaps too often, ugly. The mystery of the underlying plot of the film Chinatown is revealed near the picture's denoument.  It's all about water, the legal rights to it and the illegal, greedy and deadly actions and intrigues that men perpetrate to own and control it. The French film Jean de Florette similarly depicts this sordid aspect of our fallen natures with an astonishing intensity that reminds us that concepts such as poetic justice and/or divine retribution had perhaps best not be discounted or snickered at. The mock baptism of one of the film's characters by another to celebrate their ill-gotten control of a secret spring seemed to set the stage for heaven's eventual wrath.

The majesty of water and the fact that we incline toward not grouping it in the pantheon of traditionally cherished examples of material wealth, but as an instrument for obtaining them is instructive of our tendency to fall short of appreciating many things of natural and true value. That which typically impresses: fame, fortune, power, gold, diamonds, beautiful objects, fancy supercharged automobiles, mansions, yachts and the adulation, esteem or fear of others, these are the objects of our hollow affections. An episode of the early 1960s television drama series The Twilight Zone brings into sharp focus the final triumph of water as our truly but neglected beloved, bar none.  After latter day burglars/ Rip Van Winkles concoct a scheme to purloin gold bars and stow them in a cave in a remote desert while lying nearby in above ground glass coffins (made comatose for a century by a mysterious potion), their plan seems to have born fruit upon their awakening. In short order, their unremarkable "dishonor among thieves" and the ravages of the desert sun lead to the group's attrition and increasingly virulent mutual distrust and hatred. When the surviving two yeggs are reduced to one (the penultimate survivor is bludgeoned from behind by one of the gold bars wielded by the weaker, abused final survivor) his debilitated state is buoyed by his envisioned freedom from prosecution and hard "earned" wealth. All too soon the great cost of conniving grows greater. Bars of gold are heavy and the last of the water in his canteen leads to exhaustion and delerium. When two late 21st century motorists discover the dying crook he promises them all the remaining gold in his knapsack for just a sip of water. The couple is befuddled by the prostrate man's offering. One then remembers that gold once was highly valued many years before man learned to manufacture it.

The trouble with water is, in the final analysis, really only the trouble with us: ever scheming, ever conflicted by our dual natures and ever restless. A recent ad campaign to sell beer uses a fictional character, supposedly the epitome of cosmopolitan manliness and style who urges viewers to "stay thirsty, my friend." No need to preach this silly sermon to increase sales: thirst of all kinds have and always will rule our lives. If gratitude for water however (itself, and as a metaphor for all our natural treasures), like our daily bread, could grow to the point that other cravings are somehow diminished, a better world might emerge. Still, conservation is forever hard work and the drama of doing or not "doing the right thing" will always be with us whether it's sharing water (and other resources) or projecting the darkness within ourselves onto other tribes or societies. It's a most tricky thing.