Alfredo's post is part of our Lenten Water Project. Throughout this Lenten season our writers will be focusing on the subject of water and what that means to them. Please donate to our well-building efforts, and if you have something YOU would like to say about water, let us know and we'll post it here!
I'm always amazed at the sources of wisdom that I encounter all around me.
One day, my mother was reacting to the war-torn images in the newscast on television, the typical manichean expose of the newscasters who divide the world into the heros and the losers, the saved and the vanquished. At the time, the rumors were that all the suffering and all the turmoil were due to the greed for oil and the need for its continual access so that the world (read: the United States) could continue functioning.
She turned to me with a foreboding sigh and told me that her mother used to say, many a decade before I was ever born, that the wars in the future would not be fought for oil. They would be fought for water.
I am not a religious man in the sense that those of you most likely reading this passage would consider religious. I am not partaking in Lent, nor will I be giving up anything in the coming days. But I am fully aware that one of the major parts of the Lenten season is its moment of deep introspection and reconception. It is, however, equally a time of action. You take actions at this time, like fasting, prayer, and meditation, as participatory of the season. But as you fast (if you fast) and as you challenge yourself (if you challenge yourself) in these days, I encourage you to wonder: what is it like to go without water?
A human body can withstand weeks, weeks mind you, without food. The eventual succumbing to starvation comes well after the last bite has been taken. And yet within 72 hours, you may find yourself six feet under unless you partake of water.
Allow that to sink in. Going without food for a fast can be a bit annoying during the day, but if you have done it before you can attest that your body assimilates and eventually the hunger pangs subside. Go without water for a whole day. In fact, eat all you want. But don't take a single sip of any liquid. I dare you. By the time your mouth reaches the paltry condition of that old fuzzy couch stored away in the dusty attic, you will have wished you had chosen to give up something else.
What I took from my grandmother's warning was not a message about ecological subsistence (although it most certainly can, and should as well, be read that way). I also took from it a much more uncomplicated, yet equally as important and profound, message. What is it that I fight for? What is it that I am worried about? How much of my energy is spent focusing on those things that I can live without? And how much of my time is spent making sure that others have access to at least the bare minimum (ie: water)?
I can't tell you how angry it makes me when I miss the bus. Or about how I fume because vegetarian options at restaurants are meager. And slow internet? Don't get me started. But water. It is surely the simplest thing we all need. Have I gone without it? No. Have I ever had to struggle for it? Never. Will I conceivably find myself in want for it? Probably not. And yet it is only because of this simple need being met that I have even the ability to whine and complain, to cherish and laugh.
It is said that necessity is the mother of all invention. I would venture forward from this, then, to say that FRUSTRATION is the mother of all action. More specifically, and more pertinent to this post, frustration is the mother of action in the form of social justice. Go without water. I look at you straight in the eyes, eyebrows furrowed with penetrating pupils underneath, and challenge you to complain about anything else after you have gone without it.
Lent is about humility, about recontextualization. It is, however, also about action. And I would venture that within this context, lent must therefore be about frustration. Without frustration, there is no action, the kind of action that I write about in this post. Use the themes of lent and water to allow the frustration to become productive. What is it that we are fighting for? What is it that controls our minds at the moment, that frustrates the hell out of us? And what is it that we will do about it?
The importance of it all can be shaped by a simple question: have you gone without water?
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Alfredo is a first-year masters student at Harvard Divinity School. Concentrating on Religion and the Social Sciences, Alfredo's research interests include the sociology of religion, religious disaffiliation, and the rise of non-religiosity in America. His goal is to one day become both a gentleman and a scholar.
