"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put your water into a cup, it becomes the cup, put your water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend." - Bruce Lee
For some reason this quote has been coming up in my thoughts lately. Not as a thought or contemplation about the way I should perceive things, rather as how the energy we all have is applied to this world. You see as we all get older our approach to things change, as a matter of form or function I do not know, but it changes, and this disconcerts me.
We were all young people who let the enthusiasm and passion of our youth consume who we are, shaping the people we are now. Throwback Nikes, old school 'lo gear, a preference for brunettes and some form of asian blooded women all come from this time of forging a self identity, with unapologetic dickhead bravado combined with cocksure arrogance. The water that was our energy in our youth, was formed into the bullets we fired off drive-by style at the world and anyone who got in our way back then.
We all grow up, and slowly but surely we let the external world allow it to shape the vessels we carry our water in. Through careers, relationships, or an expected benchmark we should be at, at a certain age. We slowly become managers, vp's, senior execs in our jobs. We become husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts. We allow the path of the past before us, to mold our cisterns of the present. The way we carry our water changes. We used to let it rush down our rapids that was our lives, and now let it pool, drawing from it for the next thing we have to do, not want to do. We avoid the spillage and floods our water would rage in our youth for fear of waste in our age. Our energy is boundless and shouldn't be used to form pools, but bullets once again. The only difference is, we know where to aim now.
I can see a glorious future of drive-bys, and jack moves O-Dog and Kaine style where at that burger joint, those fools should have went home to their mammys, but before this can happen, lets make sure our bullets are hollowed pointed at the right things. We all have passions that we let slowly die for a paycheck, we all have gotten into relationships we entertain out of convenience and familiarity. What we don't do like we were young is, charge, guns blazing into things our heart knows we have passion for, but our minds doubt the practicality of. We know what we feel, but we don't always feel what we know. Aim at what we feel, not what we know. Instincts are never wrong.
The older we get, our need for a counterpart grows, not for self satisfaction, but for an intrinsic need for an equal recognition in the eyes of someone who truly understands us, and what we want in the days ahead of us. All of us feel disdain for those we know that short sell themselves into relationships that have the facade of this maturity but have the foundation of the first little piggy's straw house. It always blows over. Our water will serve us best when we recognize its ability to be the most pliable, shape adapting thing about us that can truly define our lives based on our passions and our deepest most inner desires. Anything less is building straw houses.
We all have a limited time on this Earth, and only so many bullets we can shoot. Let's make our shots count. Turn your water back into bullets...no more teapots.
A man who made his shots count.
For some reason this quote has been coming up in my thoughts lately. Not as a thought or contemplation about the way I should perceive things, rather as how the energy we all have is applied to this world. You see as we all get older our approach to things change, as a matter of form or function I do not know, but it changes, and this disconcerts me.
We were all young people who let the enthusiasm and passion of our youth consume who we are, shaping the people we are now. Throwback Nikes, old school 'lo gear, a preference for brunettes and some form of asian blooded women all come from this time of forging a self identity, with unapologetic dickhead bravado combined with cocksure arrogance. The water that was our energy in our youth, was formed into the bullets we fired off drive-by style at the world and anyone who got in our way back then.
We all grow up, and slowly but surely we let the external world allow it to shape the vessels we carry our water in. Through careers, relationships, or an expected benchmark we should be at, at a certain age. We slowly become managers, vp's, senior execs in our jobs. We become husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts. We allow the path of the past before us, to mold our cisterns of the present. The way we carry our water changes. We used to let it rush down our rapids that was our lives, and now let it pool, drawing from it for the next thing we have to do, not want to do. We avoid the spillage and floods our water would rage in our youth for fear of waste in our age. Our energy is boundless and shouldn't be used to form pools, but bullets once again. The only difference is, we know where to aim now.
I can see a glorious future of drive-bys, and jack moves O-Dog and Kaine style where at that burger joint, those fools should have went home to their mammys, but before this can happen, lets make sure our bullets are hollowed pointed at the right things. We all have passions that we let slowly die for a paycheck, we all have gotten into relationships we entertain out of convenience and familiarity. What we don't do like we were young is, charge, guns blazing into things our heart knows we have passion for, but our minds doubt the practicality of. We know what we feel, but we don't always feel what we know. Aim at what we feel, not what we know. Instincts are never wrong.
The older we get, our need for a counterpart grows, not for self satisfaction, but for an intrinsic need for an equal recognition in the eyes of someone who truly understands us, and what we want in the days ahead of us. All of us feel disdain for those we know that short sell themselves into relationships that have the facade of this maturity but have the foundation of the first little piggy's straw house. It always blows over. Our water will serve us best when we recognize its ability to be the most pliable, shape adapting thing about us that can truly define our lives based on our passions and our deepest most inner desires. Anything less is building straw houses.
We all have a limited time on this Earth, and only so many bullets we can shoot. Let's make our shots count. Turn your water back into bullets...no more teapots.
A man who made his shots count.
