An old thread? Fun times. Philosophy, is it? Well then, all sides have their yin and yang, and have not been addressed completely.
To be water, you must first have a vessel to contain it. Even oceans have their limits, and people are more like small ponds or buckets of water. Yes, one can toss a stone into a pond with little harm. But once in your pond, that stone remains. Should you absorb the stones cast by one person without reaction, then perhaps others will see and think it is acceptable to also cast rocks into your pond.
Now, what happens if you continue to absorb all the stones tossed at your pond without ever tossing them back out? Yes, your pond will fill with stones, lose its water, and become hard with the very stones you thought to let abide, letting nothing in.
As stated in other posts, water is also damaging and violent. It can wear down the stone; it can destroy the beaches. It can flood and kill. When water freezes, it becomes hard as stone, and becomes the bane of living things. Should a creature freeze completely, it will most likely die.
Moving on to oak and willow, oak grows with patients, taking hundreds of years to grow strong and tall. They let some light through their branched, and are tall enough to let things grow protected under their might. The mighty oak sips water, leaving plenty for all, and drops acorns to feed hungry beasts.
Willows grow like weeds, in a rush to spread their branches and hoard all the space they can. They are short and thick, and they leaves let in little light, making a dead area under their canopy. They sap water from the ground like a thief stealing from children. They are brittle, and die long before an oak even reaches its youth. 30 years a willow may last before it starts to split under its own weight, while the oldest oak is over 1300 years old.
The storm will break the impatient Willow long before the stalwart Oak will fail. And even should the Oak suffer more damage, it will heal, and live to ages the Willow can not even dream of. Be strong like the Oak, and shelter that which would rest at your feet. Shun the greedy Willow.
Now we will move to both topics together, to see just how much the way of water is better than that of stone. What tree can find root in the presence of only water? None, not event the water-greedy Willow. They must place their feet in the solidness of stone and soil (which is tiny stones, truth be told). What tree can survive on stone alone? None, as all would shrivel and die in weeks without any water at all. The Oak would last longer than the Willow, being the tougher of the two in all ways, but would still perish. Water can also kill the trees by flooding and uprooting the trees, or by freezing them to the core and splitting them open.
The lessons learned from the Water, the Stone, the Oak, and the Willow are as follows. At first glance, what seems to be the best path is often not the best path if it is the only one taken. All options must be weighed. All paths must be explored. Only then will you know what truly is the 'best' path for you.
Myself? Sometimes I am the pond, sometimes the stone, sometimes the Oak, and sometimes the Willow.
