It Always Begins with Water.

It’s amazing that little more than one hundred years ago, when you needed to relocate, or travel any distance at all, or plant a crop to feed your family, your first and most serious consideration was your proximity to water.

It was really a simple equation.

If you were building a house, you’d want to be close to a stream, a lake or a well. If you had to walk any distance to get to the source, you’d estimate how much water you’d need each day and how you could possibly get it to your home. If your physical abilities were inadequate, you’d keep on looking for a new place to spread your blanket.

You’d also ask around.

From your neighbor, you’d learn about expected rainfall or snowpack for the year. He’d also tell you how much you could collect from the rain barrels you’d strategically place to catch what was coming off the roof during a downpour.

You’d undoubtedly find people selling their services to help you locate an underground flow of water known as an aquifer -including the very spot you should dig your well. Your hire would bring a wishbone-shapped stick to “devine” for a source of water. He’d grab the contraption with both hands. When he felt a tug at end of the stick that was dangling free, he’d say, “dig here. This is where you’re going to find water. Fifty dollars, please.”

As it turns out, nearly half the world’s population doesn’t understand that when you turn on a tap, water comes out. And think of this: Over two and
one half times the population of the United States doesn’t have access to clean water either — whether it comes out of a tap or not.

Pretty stagering.

But for you and me, we simply turn on a tap or open a bottle. It seems like
the cold refreshing stuff is always within arms reach; or just a few steps away. It’s amazing how something so significant to the majority of the earth’s population is something that a guy like me hardly ever considers.

The process is remarkable — especially in it’s scope.

Water that finds its way to my home, starts out as snowpack collected from winter storms that settle into mountains more than fifty miles away. Once the water melts, it fills reservoirs. Once in the reservoirs, it is transported to a sophisticated filtering facility where it is pumped through a pressurized system of pipes — a system that is subdivided so many times that it’s simply too staggering to imagine.

Try to think of a single person you know who does not have running water in their home. It’s impossible.

In my town, there are one half a million people and exactly one half a million people have running water. They don’t give it a second thought. They turn on the faucet and get a drink. They twist a nob and take a shower. They put their finger over the end of a hose and they squirt off their driveway. They pull on a handle, and their body waste is miraculously washed away.

Part of the beauty of technology is convenience. The other part is recognizing — and frankly, never forgetting the miracle and blessing of convenience. It’s a two part equation.

I think it’s the same thing in other aspects of our lives.

We turn a key and a magical series of explosions ignites ancient organic compounds that have been converted into a fuel source; fuel that made its way from deep underground to a refinery and then through a complex distribution system, until it ends up in an individualized holding tank that we sit atop. We’ve connected four wheels and a few seats to that miniturized power plant that turns gas into something we call horsepower. We turn a simple key and a continual spark ignites the fuel and — without giving it another thought — we drive.

At home, we plug our devices into outlets that somehow harness a source
of power that we’ve figured out how to replicate, but we still haven’t discovered how to fully explain. We throw a switch and night becomes day. We drag our finger across a screen and the volume intensifies. We push a button, and voila, seconds later, we are chugging a smoothy.

But really, it all starts with water. And the availabity of the stuff.

Or, better said, how much water is available to any given population. That’s the reason weather prognostication is big business when it comes to predicting who’s going to receive the live-blood of civilization and who is going to go dry. Tie together a few bad snow years in the Rocky Mountains and Las Vegas gets nervous. Add a few light rain years to that and the Los Angeles basin starts to look like an oasis of doom. All the gold tucked away in the mansions of Bel Air is worthless, if there’s no water coursing through the homes where those who hold the purse strings of society reside.

While water is a largely uncontrollable commodity, there are those that figure out how to provide something that does becomes a full-fledged necessity — and these thinkers and these doers become the proprietors
of the future.

Steve Jobs was one.

Hide someone’s iphone and watch them scramble. Really scramble. Just don’t take it from them for too long. The emotional trauma they feel accelerates rapidly to the point of incoherence — and all within a few minutes.

Henry Ford was another one. You know that story. While he didn’t invent the car, his production innovations made it possible for all of us to have one. Or two. Or three.

That’s how it is with innovation. Sometimes we desperately know what we need. And sometimes we don’t. But when someone brings water — or something that metaphorically resembles it — to your doorstep, and it changes everything about what you do, how you live and who you are,
it’s more than inspiring. It’s pretty spectacular.