On a Glass of Water

What will this become in the future?
With certainty, it will become more valuable.

That is just the way it was
Nothing could be better and nothing ever was
Oh, they say you can see your future
Inside a glass of water, the riddles and the rhymes
"Will I see heaven in mine?"

~ lyrics from Glass of Water, by Coldplay

I was compelled to do a creative writing exercise for some reason; I wanted to keep the subject simple, yet would easily lead into something more trippy and profound. I decided to restrict it to one common thing related to: a subject mentioned in the last chapter of a non-fiction book I read, an object I’d use first thing in the morning, and to whatever contents I’d find in my mailbox this morning. Upon finding my utility bill (and seeing the notice on my condo’s public bulletin board*), and noting the first thing that I grab to use with my multi-vitamins, and the blurb mentioned in the last chapter of a Richard Dawkins book I last read, the answer couldn’t come any simpler or clearer: a glass of water. It seems quite fitting since Earth Day is coming soon, and the topic is somewhat related to the environmental consciousness that the day is supposed to promote.

A glass of water is so simple, and yet so symbolic of some very transcendental things of thought. As a Canadian, living in a nation with the greatest abundance of potable water on Earth, sometimes a simple glass of water can so easily be taken for granted. That’s happening with me less so now that I’m doing more long distance running again, and being more mindful of how important it is to properly rehydrate. A glass of water somehow has become some ridiculous metaphorical indicator of perceived optimism/pessimism in a person when they first glance at a 125 millilitres of water inside a 250 millilitre capacity glass.** It’s the subject of the Paradox of Value, a matter of debate amongst economists when it is compared to a diamond. I don’t wear jewelry, and find water more immediately practical and life sustaining than a diamond, thus water for me is the more valuable thing. I’ll let you research this stuff on Wikipedia for yourself, because economic theories don’t interest me. King Solomon had the right idea when he was trying to trick and seduce the Queen of Sheba.

A glass of water is an indicator of one’s ability to remain balanced and steady. In fact, there is even an iPhone app out there called A Glass of Water. It was developed by Swedish engineers working with Toyota. It’s a virtual glass of water, used for monitoring and giving feedback on one’s driving ability for making smooth transitions into accelerating, braking, and steering. The accelerometer in the phone triggers the image of the glass on the screen to spill and splash out its virtual water if stops and starts are too abrupt, or the turns are too hard***. The purpose of this app is to help the driver improve engine efficiency, gas consumption, and their handling skill of their vehicle. The more water lost out of the glass during your trip, the worse your driving safety performance is. In my readings of Zen meditation, there was more than just on time that I’ve encountered an exercise where one is to imagine a glass of clear water, with a bit of sediment on the bottom of it. Succumbing to emotional upset is equal to shaking the glass and clouding the water, and losing all sense of mental clarity on reality. The purpose of meditation is to remain calm enough to allow such emotional sediment to settle out again, to regain clarity of mind.

Here’s a wildly interesting fact to dwell on when contemplating a glass of water. There are more water molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water on all of planet Earth. It’s roughly about 1500 times more in fact.**** That’s not even the most interesting part of this observation. The interesting thing occurs when you account for the probabilities that are statistically possible, given this great ratio of difference between the H₂O molecule number and global glass of water number. The mind-blowing thing is that during the course of having the recommended average daily intake for adequate hydration throughout an average lifetime, there is a high likelihood that one has had enough contact with enough molecules of water, or their constituent atoms of oxygen and hydrogen, which have in some way, cycled through or made contact with, every other type of living being that pre-existed you. Surely enough it’s at least a certainty that throughout the course of your whole lifetime, there has been enough of a volume of water molecules that have been cycling you and other beings from food and drink you consume, and the humidity in the air you inhale and exhale cycling through you to substantiate this. There’s a molecule of water in any one of the glasses you drank that was passed through a Neanderthal’s kidney, another that once was a component of the blood of a T-Rex, others that passed through the gills of trilobites and the roots of extinct, giant fern-like trees which have long since turned into coal, and perhaps even one that was used by the metabolic process of the very first singular cell of life that appeared on this planet. Things probably get wilder yet with viewing  water on a quantum level, but I'm hardly qualified enough to expound about the complexity of these interactions in writing. A single glass of water is not only life giving, but life connecting, and that alone is a wondrous enough thing for me. It’s nothing mystical; it’s just science, yet the scienctific data makes it more precious and sacred than any religion ever could.

The glass of water case is another reason I have for ridiculing religious mysticism. Surely throughout even a short lifetime, one has consumed at least one glass of water that had a molecule, or molecules that may have been used by such 'holy' influences, such as the water used by: John the Baptist to baptize Jesus, Confucius to steep his tea, the Hebrews to exile the baby Moses down the Nile, Hindu priests for any sacred ritual they perform in the Holy Ganges, or even by Mohammed for his ablutions before he prayed. If water is already this all-encompassing, and all-permeating to every other life form in existence on Earth, including to those sources who founded/served their respective religions, why the need then to perform a silly, sacrosanct ritual of “sanctifying” water, trying to make it pure and more “holy” through some babbled quasi-magical incantations? It is through man’s own foolish sanctimony, arrogance, and ignorance that he feels that he can intercede and make stuff that has already had its supposed contact with the divine beings even holier. As for purification, I’d prefer people using some common sense of not throwing pollution in it rather than seeing need to attend some service where water needs to be “blessed”. We can bless water by not wasting and polluting it so carelessly. It’s cases like this where I wish people would allow more intercession from I call the real holy trinity: science, mathematics, and logic. We need to value fresh water more, and be more environmentally responsible in using it.  Desalinizing sea-water is terribly costly in terms of energy use, and more and more nations are looking into doing this as an option to protect or replenish their water supplies. Harvesting icebergs is another extreme idea. It's done already by a Canadian company in Newfoundland, which ironically, uses the purity found in iceberg water for the purpose of making vodka. Of course the iceberg flow comes around or directly to Newfoundland, and this is a relatively passive harvest of pure water for the sake of producing a luxery beverage. However, if one modern concern is global warming, does it make sense to exploit, consume and destroy the very things that are helping to regulate the temperature of Earth's oceans which are preventing it from happening quicker? April 12th of this year marked how an iceberg had destroyed the Titanic a century ago, but what date in the future will mark our ultimate demise once we have to reached a point of being relegated to actively harvest the icebergs, polar ice and glaciers, just for untainted drinking water? Most people are ignorant of how little of it there is in comparison to ocean/marine water.*****

Don't ask me how many of these could be made from one iceberg.

During a documentary program I saw last year related to Earth Day, I remember one of the speakers, I believe it was Dr. David Suzuki, who said something to the effect that our planet shouldn’t be called “Earth, but rather it should be called “Water”, since the majority of this planet’s surface is covered with it. When it comes down to it, the planet is already changing more and more to fit its namesake proper, realizing that whole rivers and lakes are being drained around major cities in China because of over-population, and with more affluence coming to nations like India and Brazil, there will be even yet greater man-made strain on the hydrosphere.  I fear for Canada’s future: with the possibility that our nation being a made a centre of environmental exploitation and conflict, as the eyes of the world look upon us as some great big oasis, on a planet that’s getting drier . . . and thirstier.

*- Water service for the building will be shut off due to system maintenance on April 21/12. I’m lucky I’m out of town then.

**- I don’t and won’t use either of the terms “half-full” or “half-empty”. I’m a realist; all I care about is whether or not the contents in any glass are suitable enough to quench my thirst.

***-This would be an utterly useless app to have on the pothole riddled streets of this town. However, the app is free, so there's no cost to you to check it out.

****-Using factoids from the Wolfram Alpha science app: One glass = 0.25 L; There are 3.5 x 10^19 L of fresh water, or 1.4 x 10^20 glasses of water (fresh), plus 1.332 x 10^21 L of ocean water on earth, or 5.328 x 10^21 glasses of ocean water on Earth, which equals 5.4612 x 10^21 glasses of water on Earth. The number of molecules in a glass (250 mL) of water: weight of water 250 mL = 250 grams); Molecular mass of water = 18.013 grams per mole; Number of moles in 250 grams of water = 250 g divided by 18.013 g/mole = 13.879 moles. Therefore, 13.879 moles multiplied by Avogadro’s number (6.022141 x 10^23) = 8.358x 10^24 molecules in a 250 mL glass of water. Dividing 8.358 x 10^24 by 5.461 x 10^21 yields a quotient and resulting factor of around 1,530.5. It's not accurate because this isn't accounting for the salinity of the ocean water, nor atmospheric moisture, nor the remaining water retained in any of the living beings in the biosphere, which are using it for metabolic processes; so that numerical factor could waver a little more. For my intents and purposes here I’ll settle for rounding down to the factor of 1,500. Be thankful that I didn’t resort to putting both you and I through the misery of getting a more accurate figure through calculus.   

*****- Assuming we have a median depth for the world’s oceans (3900 meters = 3.9 km), and let’s suppose we used that same depth for pooling the volume of all our planet’s fresh water into one localized area on the globe. Given this depth, the surface area of this fresh water reservoir of Earth would be (3.5 x 10^19 L, which equals 3.5 x 10^7 cubic kilometers, divided by 3.9 km), roughly 8.97 million square kms: a gigantic lake averaging 4 km deep, and roughly the geographical size of Brazil, plus its neighbours Paraguay and Uruguay combined. That’s still a ridiculously small percentage compared to the remaining amount of ocean/marine water on the face of this planet. If it still doesn’t yet register just how, in actuality, really small that proportion is, just try and imagine now all the remaining terrestrial, aquatic (non-salt water dwelling) plant and animal organisms, and the seven billion humans living on this Earth all trying to compete for the water from this one lake.