As I slowed down the pace this week, my attention turned to the precious things in my life, like water. Water keeps me alive, and I am grateful for it.
I turn on the faucet and the miracle of readily available clean water flows out.
There is plenty of water on earth, yet 780 million people lack access to clean water (2½ times the population of the United States)
3.4 million die needlessly each year from water related diseases that are preventable with sanitation equipment* (water.org)
As I treasure each sip of water this week, and as I praise it, I cook with it, bathe in it, wash clothes in it, water flowers and trees with it, and wash my hands with it. It is essential to my life, although it doesn’t strive to be useful, or ask me for anything in return.
I can’t possibly explain my love affair with water without leaving out 1,000 more ways it benefits me, but besides sustaining my life, I love it because:
It makes clouds – [puffy white ones in a sunny sky, and dark black ones that announce a storm in a grey sky).
It co-operates with air and fire as essential resources on our planet.
I swim and boat and ski and skate on various forms of it.
This fact surprised me: “in 2007, more than 11,300 readers of the British Medical Journal chose the introduction of clean water and sewage disposal—“the sanitary revolution”—as the most important medical milestone since 1840, when the BMJ was first published. Readers were given 10 days to vote on a shortlist of 15 milestones, and sanitation topped the poll, followed closely by the discovery of antibiotics and the development of anaesthesia, according to the US National Centre for Biotechnology.
To learn more about this, visit www.thewaterproject.org