the endless lake

the endless lake represents a framework for the embodiment of care and accompaniment. Large, sweeping, and folding on the left-hand side, the painting ripples on horizontally before flattening out to calmer waters. Chaotic in appearance, but meticulous in creation, the lake holds many details, brush marks, trails, and shapes, all guiding the eye along a journey. As you follow each trail of dots or lines or expansive gestures, you reach the end only to find yourself back at the beginning. The beginning of something new. 

We are all uniquely located in this lake: a dot, a line, a tone, a freckle, a speck, a mark. We all leave a mark in this world. The word to note is uniquely. Everyone on this earth is perfectly located in space and time, but that location cannot be shared. There is only one you. Location is everything: location informs perspective. Social processes also find their home in the lake. If the various marks on the canvas represent us, swimming in the endless lake, then the canvas represents that water: the social processes we adhere to. These social processes affect everyone differently depending on where we are located. On the left-hand side of the painting, the canvas-water-social construction of reality twists and turns on itself, and the paint-people located there are affected accordingly.  On the right-hand side of the painting, the water is smooth, flat, calm, so the paint-people need only relate directly with one another - there is neither interference nor stimulus from a social process. 

Let’s say a shark entered the water. A hungry shark at that. That shark would take on a different appearance depending on where in the lake we are located. From one location, we can see the shark bare its sharp teeth. Those located there will be speaking from fear about the urgency of dealing with the shark, before it takes a bite out of them. From another location, we see only its powerful tail. Those located there might lack any urgency, “What a beautiful, powerful fish,” they’d remark. “Its swishing tail leaves ripples in the water strong enough to propel our boats along. Why would we kill it?” Our local moral worlds define what is or is not at stake. Well, is it okay to let the shark bite people just because it helps our boats move through the endless lake faster? Thanks to the process of othering, the answer is yes: we don’t feel a moral obligation to walk with others, let alone care for them. Those located in front of the shark’s sharp teeth aren’t “us” so… good luck to them. But. If those people were your family, your friends, your favorite celebrity. Suddenly, you don’t mind having to use paddles to propel your boat if it means saving someone you know. 

In the endless lake, you don’t have to know to care. To Love. We’re all located perfectly uniquely and we are all made of paint. How we manifest physically - thin line, four dots, dragged smudge - means nothing. And Everything. Ultimately, in the endless lake, everything is.

So. We care for each other because we are each other.