Mondays: Sloshy

My favorite thing I heard this week came from the C.R.E.A.T.E. Series podcast. Natalie quoted a friend: "Never hold another woman as solid. Let her be fluid." It lined up. Over half of the human body is water. We're sloshy.

The US Geological Survey's Water Science School (citing H.H. Mitchell from the Journal of Biological Chemistry 158) breaks it down more specifically:

- the brain and heart are 73% water;

- the lungs are 83%;

- skin holds 64% water;

- muscles and kidneys 79%, and

- bones are 31% water.

The quote ("let her be fluid") referred to letting each other ebb and flow without pinning anyone to a particular moment in time -- a bad mood, a dip, an unflattering dress. But we could broaden that. We could let each other (and ourselves) grow and morph in a lifetime. Better yet: We could hold the whole thing as fluid. What would change if we did?

Fluid. Not a spectrum. Not a sliding scale, because those things are too linear. But make it a river that bends and winds, drops deep, then shallow, and gets frothy by the banks. There is so much freedom in the thought of it that I'll either giggle or weep.

One of the magical things I've noted about Time is how it shape-shifts all things simple and all things complex -- or so I guess, not really knowing what "all things" are. Things get bigger or smaller, shimmer, then deaden, focus then blur. I notice this even as immediately as words coming out of my mouth.

I was talking to my extroverted friend, Carla, yesterday about introversion and extroversion. She relayed a story about an old co-worker who left the end of a very gabby, hyper-social work conference and said she would stab the next person who made her speak. I told Carla I related 100%. (And then I told her she was safe.) She asked what it was about talking and listening that was so draining for an introvert.

And I think that's how extro- and introverts are usually differentiated -- by energy in or energy out. Extro's are energized by gibby-gab and intro's are drained by it. I don't know the brain science behind it, but it seems true.

But the solid vs. fluid idea... Something in there rings. Is it that words make watery things solid? Or is it the fear of words will make US solid? That words are like a flash-freeze? I'm not always averse to talking. Sometimes I'm comfortable. Sometimes I'm not. I don't know when or why or under what conditions. It's just the way the current flows. And I'm generally inclined to let it without getting too hopped up about it.

Maybe it's something different entirely. What I mean to say is that what I find so frustrating about speaking (when the current is just so...) -- especially when I care what I'm saying -- is that it's like spitting solids when you want the thing to stay liquid. That by the time my words come out of my mouth my brain has already moved down the river, and although the thing I first said is still true, it's now sideways.

Initiate chase sequence to right the course.

Sometimes that happens with blog entries, too.