A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words...

Familiar with the adage 'A picture is worth a thousand words'? According to Wikipedia, the adage refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single image. If you want to know what else Wikipedia writes, just google it - it's a google generation - so nothing wrong about it, nothing to be ashamed of. Now, what do you see in that photo above? Please, I'm not giving a Science lesson, so please don't tell me about how the atoms formed the compound scientifically known as hydrogen oxide or shortly term as H2O. Science is like lullaby to me, swinging me into a sweet sleep. Surely there is more to it than just water. Search deeper, anything abstract can be dug out from just a piece of great photo.

With that single drop of water, accumulated over time, they form a large expanse of the Earth. About two-third of this Earth is covered by water - the dead lakes, the vast seas, the oceans that separate continents, the swirling rivers, the rushing waterfalls and the dirty water pumping out from your house. A single drop of water forms life on Earth. Let's travel back in time roughly about 2000 years ago when God has just created this Earth. No argument about the age of this planet Earth, please, let it be 2000 years ago because living with the dinosaurs were just a crazy idea. Now, imagine that there is no such thing as modernisation, it is just between you and nature. You have all the time in the world do live life in a slow pace. No hurry, no homework, no traffic to distract you, just the beauty of nature and you are staring at the roaring waterfall and it flows into a stream. Isn't it peaceful to just look into the water, see how clear it is, how drops of water can form into a habitat to sustain aquatic lives.

A drop of fresh dew. That signifies a new day. Hardly will you see the morning dew if you are staying in the heart of a city surrounded by buildings and more buildings. There is nothing to represent nature. Use your imagination and let's go up to Penang Hill or even Cameron Highlands. Take a walk among the trees in the garden and look at how the dew sparkle while it nestles on the green leaf and moving along to the tip of the leaf and plop it goes onto the ground. Take in a deep breath and know for sure that you will be a having a great day ahead of you till the next morning. For those living in the city, such relaxing morning dissipates into thin air. It's all about hurrying off to work, hurrying off to school, you don't notice even if there's a morning dew greeting you from one of your potted plants. This is how disengage we are with nature even if it is only a drop of water.

A drop of tears. Sounds silly you say? It is life. It's not the first drop of tears you show when you were hauled up and out from your mother's womb. It is the tears from your mother. The joy and happiness for having you - a new breath of life. That drop of tears speaks volume. The unspeakable joy while counting the number of toes and fingers that you have. Pouring out her soul for your life to be blessed and crafting your future in her mind. As years go by, you will be the one to prove whether it should be tears of joy or of heartache. A mother's drop of tears cannot be replaced by neither gold nor silver. That is how vast and how deep her love for her offsprings. On the other hand, it is tears of relief that you're out and not gonna make her look like a hippopotamus anymore.

A trickle of water. Raindrop. When the sun has been shining it's glorious brightness, you will wish for even a drop of rain to come down from the cloudless sky. But when it is pouring cats and dogs, our natural built-in complain system in our head works wonderfully, complaining about how the rain should stop as it is getting too wet. Has it ever occur to you how happily the people who are faced with drought will be jumping about? That drop of water brings hope to a better future, a better crop yield, a better livelihood - life which does not have to be tortured by constant thirst.

A drop of water but endless ripples. A symbolic meaning for one's small action that causes multiple consequences. It may be positive yet, it may be negative. Now, let me share with you a one sentence story of a little wrong move causes a multitude of heartache and a mountain of problems. You are a family man yet due to your uncontrollable temper you killed someone by accident thus, you are to be sentenced for donkey years while your parents are tormented by busybody neighbours, your beautiful wife and lovely children suffered emotionally and financially, your siblings will be in a dilemma whether to acknowledge you as their brother or disown you, further stressing them in their lives. Well, if you do good to others, that kindness will flow from one hand to another, passing on goodness is contagious.

Water has life of its own. If I've not remembered wrongly, according to one of the Japanese documented studies that caught my attention a few years back, it shows and proves that water has life of its own. Two experiments have been carried out simultaneously, a glass of water was rained with kind words and affection while the other glass of water was been yelled at, cursed and condemned. After the experiment, a drop of water from each jar was taken and placed on the microscople slide. Through the power of the magnification lenses, the Japanese scientists were astounded and astonished with the immense contrast of the pattern formed between the two droplets of water. You would be as shocked as they shocked then. The cursed and condemned water had haphazard patterns formed whilst the droplet with affectionate words enveloping it formed symmetrical patterns of beauty.

As the title says - a picture is worth a thousand words - that is just a proverb. Everything else is abstract. It is how you see things and how you view life. That photo is seriously just a drop of water, nothing but a drop of water. Profound and yet simple, simple and yet profound.