This is the story of a drop of water.
Imagine what water once meant. Imagine what it still means to so many. Imagine slow marches across boundless deadness, exhausted and depressed. Imagine the stream lazily meandering over broken ground, drops upon drops. Imagine the feeling of coolness washing over your body, baked and bruised. Imagine.
There are something like 5,000 billion billion atoms in a drop of water. You cannot imagine that number. It's like trying to imagine what forever is.
A drop of water weighs something like 0.06 grams. There is enough energy in that one drop to keep a light bulb lit for over 100,000 years. A glass of water? Forget about it.
All life on Earth exists thanks to the sun. Its light travels hundreds of millions of miles to bathe the grass and the trees and you in warmth. The speed of light establishes the speed limit for the universe. God polices. Every time light passes through a drop of water, it is bent, put on an unintended path. Its life, insofar as it has one, is irrevocably altered by a drop of water crossing its path.
More of the sun's energy is trapped inside Earth's atmosphere every day. It heats the planet. Slowly, very slowly, that heat transforms the thousands of drops of water frozen in time at the Earth's poles back into flowing water. Eventually, those countless droplets will engulf dozens of cities on the coasts. They will drown innumerable plants and animals, sinking species. They will remake the world.
Last winter, in New Zealand, I'd often go to the beach and splash. On some random day, on some random beach, I decided to talk to a lonely old man I found there. He asked where I was from. I told him. He asked what I was doing there. I told him. He told me he'd spent the past 30 years living on the beach. His wife had died eight years ago. She'd been buried at sea. He still missed her.
When my dog Zack died, there were beads of water around his eyes. I kissed him. He was still warm. I dreamt of him moving. In my mind, I saw him moving again and again and again. He didn't. I took his collar off. Hugged him. Put my head against his. And then I left.
More than half of you is water. When you quench your thirst, you are committing a lesser act of cannibalism. No atom in your body was there seven years ago. No water in your body has been there nearly that long. How many drops of water have passed through you? How many drops of water have kept you moving, breathing, thinking, living? And through how many other people have those droplets also passed?
Someone at some point has kissed in the rain. It's been in movies so it's happened. Maybe they'd just met. Maybe they'd been set up by a friend. Maybe they thought it was wrong. Maybe it was their first date. Maybe they were falling in love. Maybe they'd just been engaged. Maybe they'd just been married. Maybe it was their anniversary. Maybe they were saying goodbye. Maybe they would never see one another again. There was always water.
Maybe that couple made it. Maybe they lived a long and fruitful and beautiful life together. Sooner or later, one of them would get sick. They would go into the hospital. They would find out that he'd not be leaving. Machines would beat to the mortal rhythm. He'd look up, smiling. She'd look down, weeping. A tear would fall from her face and splash on his. He'd close his eyes, and that drop of water would lazily meander over the contours of his face.
That drop of water has potential. Do you?
