Once upon time there was a large body of water. Freshwater. Up high in the mountains, surrounded by pristine trees and unspoiled landscapes of many colors. Every summer the water would evaporate itself and mix with his friend the sky, and they would hang out together for a while. When it was time, the evaporated water would then turn into frozen water and would snow down on the mountaintops. He was always worried, however. Sometimes he didn’t think the animals below would have enough time to fatten their bellies enough to make it through the winter. The other animals usually moved to nicer neighborhoods when the time came. It always worked out, though.
Frozenwater would sit on the mountaintop, relaxing, waiting for his other friend the sun to come and thaw him out. When it came time to thaw out, he would run down the mountains, and separate himself out into many streams, and rivers. Eventually he would go back and rejoin himself in the lakes that spotted the various high mountain plains. Every year they had a long discussion, actually a discussion with himself, about which part would go up into the sky, and become air, and then become snow, and which part would stay behind and freeze itself under it’s own skin.
Of course, the part of himself that had the most fun was the small part that every year got to flow all the way down to the ocean. It was kind of like a cultural exchange of sorts, set up long ago by who knows what or who. The freshwater would allow a small part of himself to flow all the way out to the ocean, where he would see different fish, and animals and creatures that he would never see up on in the lake or the sky or the mountaintop.
And every summer, the large ocean would send a small part of himself, up into the air, and would make it up to the mountain, and then back down into the lake. Where he could play with new friends that he hadn’t seen in a while that belonged to his other self, which of course was all part of the same self.
This continued, season after season, year after year, millenia after millenia. Until one day, the part of freshwater that was chosen (usually with a couple rounds of rock scissor paper) to go down to meet with it’s other self, the saltwater self, couldn’t. Almost couldn’t. There was some kind of a giant wall that was keeping the freshwater self from meeting his saltwater self. So he had to go back, but when he turned around to go back, he was already back. There was a giant lake, a new lake, where there wasn’t one before. The freshwater looked around. The trees looked different. The sky looked different. He stuck his finger up into the air and checked the temperature, and decided that he wouldn’t be able to freeze that year. Oh well, he decided to make the best of it.
A few hundred years passed. No freezing. No mountaintops, no splitting into stream and river and many small lakes. It was no big deal to freshwater, because he was still together with himself. Freshwater laughed. It wasn’t like he would ever be apart from himself, despite wherever this weird wall came from.
It’s like when you have one of those days, and you can just see yourself in all other people. For some strange reason, you just feel connected. Like when you see somebody, you kind of have a feeling, that you know this person. Even though you’ve never met, you just feel something. And despite how much you feel wonderful when you notice this feeling, it never is able to stay long.
Then one spring, when the snow part of itself was melting, and flowing into the new lake part of itself, (although by this time the new lake was rather old,)
the strange wall had dissappeared. So the freshwater just kept right on flowing. Down. Down. And a lot of the other freshwater selves wanted to join itself on the way down, since there was so much of it.
And then a funny thing happened. Because the freshwater had been apart from itself for such a long time, he kind of forgot that he was a small sliver of the larger saltwater part of himself. So when the freshwater self greeted his saltwater self, for a moment, it seemed as if he were a small child meeting with an old grandparent. Of course the feeling lasted only a flash, as whenever freshwater reunites with the saltwater, you can remember who you are. All is well. Because water never really is separate from itself, as any scientist will tell you. Always flowing, never static. And despite having the allusion of being separated, you are always together.