Seeing the water.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

~ This is Water by David Foster Wallace (LINK)

It's difficult to see the water when you are in it.

Systems are all around us and we act as nodes in many of them.

We are the tax-paying node in the government and the transported node in the Metro Rail system. We are the paying node in the grocery delivery app. And the value creation node in our jobs.

Of course, we can't see that. It's challenging to see yourself as a node in someone else's system.

But there's no one system and it doesn't belong to anyone. Systems plug into each other as they create value and things (and individuals) flow through them.

When we start seeing the water, we also find agency in choosing which waters we want to swim in.