Friday, August 7, 2015

August 7, 2015 - Living on the Water


I think people who live along the water--lakes, rivers, oceans--tend to live a slower-paced life.  Check any community located directly on the water and tell me if it isn’t true.  The further you get away from water, the quicker the pace of life becomes.  I swear it’s true, and this makes me wonder why it’s so.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the water itself that slows people down.

Water is life.
 
In ancient times, everyone had to live near water because they all needed a direct water source, but as man became more sophisticated, he was able to find water in other ways.  He built aqueducts and brought the water much further out from the original source.  This allowed his tiny river towns to grow into large cities.  Crops could be grown and irrigated much further away from the original water source, and more food meant more people.  And more people meant more taxes and power.  Ancient Rome mastered the aqueduct with engineering marvels and then proceeded to conquer the world.

But as cities grow, they get large and busy.  The water is shipped in via aqueducts or pipes, and no one really thinks about it much anymore.  We just turn the tap on now and out it comes, so we don’t really appreciate it.  When you don’t actually look at the water supply, you lose an important connection.  Water is life.  Plentiful water or lack of it has shaped entire civilizations and always will.

Perhaps busy people get that way because they don’t have any beautiful bodies of water to stop and gaze upon.  Why would anyone want to rush by a beautiful river or lake?  They wouldn’t.  They’d stop and look out across the waves.  They’d take in that certain smell of a fresh body of water.  They’d walk along the shore, skip stones on the surface, and perhaps chat or fish.  But they certainly wouldn’t be rushing.  This is one of the many hidden miracles of water.  It says, “What’s your hurry?” to the passerby, who never has an adequate response.