The water surrounds you, rising up to your waist, and the heavy sky threatens to spill more than it already holds. Yet there you are, holding an umbrella. Why? What do you believe you are protecting?

That umbrella is not against the rain, nor against the water. It is a symbol, an illusion of control. You carry it as if you could stave off the inevitable, as if that small object could change something in a landscape that surpasses you in magnitude. But it doesn't. It can't. You know it. And yet, you keep holding it.

The water is not the enemy. It never was. It is what supports you, what envelops you. Yet, somehow, you learned to distrust it, as if the act of surrendering could destroy you. And there lies the problem: you want to walk amidst the inevitable, you want to move forward in the midst of the vastness, but you keep clinging to a protection you do not need.

What would happen if you let go of the umbrella? If you allowed the water to fall on you without resistance? If you accepted there was nothing to protect because there was never any real danger, only the idea of one? Perhaps you would get wet, perhaps you would feel the cold. But you would also feel something else: freedom.

The umbrella is a self-imposed limit, a barrier between you and the world. And the question is not why you carry it, but how much longer you will hold it.