Go Seek The Water! (and forget the vessel that holds it)

My son is 16 years old and an extraordinary young man. Despite my bumbling attempt at single fatherhood, he has managed to escape — thus far — relatively unscathed and seemingly well-adjusted.

I can take no credit for this.

I wonder what it means to be a good father. Is it providing him love and encouragement? Is it helping him learn responsibility and self-discipline? Is it giving him a good home and the resources to explore his abilities and dreams? Each day I bump against these questions as each new situation arises for which I feel so ill-prepared. I have no idea what I should do sometimes, honestly.

I am learning that the best thing I can do for him is to model what it looks like to be on a journey of self-understanding and self-exploration, and talk to him about it.

What I try to share with him is this:

1. You can never truly know yourself if by “yourself” you mean “Jakob” or “Mike” or whatever name you call yourself. That person is created within the mind. I may think I know myself, but who knows how others know me? There are hundreds or thousands of “Mikes” out there — each person experiencing me through their own lens. Don’t make yourself crazy trying to make everyone see the same “you.” They never will.
2. This mind-created “you” is nothing more than a vessel for the contents of the real You. Think of it as a jug holding water. You have a name, a shape, a quality, a story, a situation — but you are not the jug. You are the water, and knowing the jug is not the same as knowing the water.
3. Endeavor to know the water — that part of you that may be contained temporarily in the vessel but is fluid and changes shape and never really disappears. I am water. You are water. Where you begin and I end is like trying to determine where the river ends and the ocean starts. We may arbitrarily make the distinction, but it’s nonsense. The water doesn’t care. It just flows. And so do you.

The way I see it, this lesson encapsulates so much of what I want my son to learn about being alive…about being a good person.

As Rumi said:

Know that the outward form passes away
But the world of reality remains forever.
How long will you play at loving the shape of the jug?
Leave the jug; go, seek the water!