The Flood Season, When the Fields Rest and the Question "What For" Finally Gets to Speak

The boat lies in front of the porch, its rope tied to a house post, its bow knocking softly on the step each time the water moves.

October, and the water has come. Silty water the colour of milk tea, so still and so close to the doorstep that you could lean down and touch it. Mornings smell of young mud and of rice-straw smoke from someone cooking across the water. My field lies down there, already under, the harvest long finished and not yet time to sow again. In this season a farmer like me has nothing urgent to do.

"You're just going to sit there?" my wife asked, still stirring the pot of soup.

"What else would I do?"

"You sit there with a face like you're counting debts."

I laughed and did not argue. I am fifty-two, I have farmed since I was eighteen, and in the middle of a noon with nothing urgent, watching the water level, I heard in my head a question that has never had time to ask itself: all these years, what was I doing it for?

If you are in a season like this too, when the household and the work have thinned out and that question quietly sits down beside you, this is what I noticed while I let it sit. There is no answer here. Only how I sat with it.

This is not sadness over having no work. The flood season is a familiar season, it comes every year. Nor is it that idleness makes a person restless. What caught my attention was something else: this question is not new. It is only newly heard.

The water rises, and the questions float up with it

Three months of turning soil, sowing, pumping, fertilising, chasing rats, guarding against birds, and I did not have one minute to ask myself anything. Morning came with its work, evening with its tiredness, then sleep. Every day had something that needed doing, so every day already had its answer, the one nobody has to say aloud: finish this first.

The easiest explanation is that I have too much free time and so I think too much. Maybe partly. But I think it lies further out. The work never answered the question for me. It only kept the question quiet, with the sound of the pump, the sound of feet wading, people calling to each other across the field banks. The flood takes all those sounds away, and the old question, sitting exactly where it always sat, suddenly comes through as clearly as water slapping against the boat.

Today I sat on the step with my feet hanging just above the water and remembered something from when I was young. Once I dreamed of working in the city, of leaving this land. I stayed, because the family needed someone to stay, and because I was not sure I could have gone anyway. In my head another voice came up, a little smaller, and asked: "So did you choose to stay, or were you afraid to leave?" I could not answer it, and I let it sit there.

The flood season teaches me nothing. I tell myself that so I do not fool myself. It only gives me time. And time, it turns out, is what I rarely have for sitting beside a question without having to solve it.

Two things to do in the flood season

I would not dare say this is the right way. They are only two things I tried in the weeks of high water, and I found sitting got lighter.

The first is watching the water level. Each morning, sit somewhere dry and firm, a good distance from the edge, and watch one thing that is changing slowly. If you do not live near rivers, a puddle after rain, a patch of sun moving across the floor, or a cup of tea cooling will do.

The first time I sat, my mind ran everywhere for the first two minutes: the electricity bill, the price of rice, the tiller that still needed fixing. In the third minute I finally noticed a clump of water hyacinth drifting past, slower than I imagined, turning one small circle before it went on. After a week I did not find the question any smaller. I only found myself sitting near it and less often wanting to run. Some people find something different, and nobody has to match me.

On a day with no three minutes, watch it for ten breaths. That is all.

Where it usually goes wrong is straining to find a meaning in it: sitting there trying to work out what the water is teaching, what the hyacinth stands for in a human life. It is tempting because it sounds deep. But once you are busy thinking, you have stopped looking. Let the hyacinth be a hyacinth.

The second thing is doing some slow hand-work that was left unfinished. I dragged out my old net to mend, though this year I may not use it. My fingers remembered the knots before my head did. Your unfinished job might be a shirt missing a button, a chair with a broken leg, a pot plant that needs fresh soil. Take care with knives, scissors and needles, and do not demand that it be useful.

Doing hand-work like this is a cousin of finding peace in the simplest tasks, though I am not saying it fixes anything. I only know that after a session of mending, sitting beside the old question was easier.

If you like thinking about things that change every day without our catching it, there is This Table Grows Older Every Day, which moves at the same pace as water rising a little at a time.

If you try and the question stays loud

The first common reason: sitting still makes the question louder, and a person wants to jump up and find a job. That is fine. Get up, do the hand-work mentioned above, and come back later. Sitting with a question is not an endurance test.

The second reason: maybe what is loud is not the question but tiredness. Some years after the harvest I only wanted to lie down. Then lie down. The question can wait till tomorrow, it is more patient than I thought.

And one more thing, said plainly. If a feeling of emptiness or pointlessness runs on for weeks, along with eating or sleeping going out of rhythm or no longer wanting to do anything, please do not carry it alone through the flood season. Talk to someone with professional training. This piece cannot replace that. If you think about hurting yourself, even as a passing thought, it cannot wait: speak with someone you trust today, and read the Emergency Support page.

Yesterday afternoon the water began to go down. So slowly that I only knew because the line of mud on the house post sat a finger's width lower than the day before.

My wife carried out the pot of soup. I sat a little longer, then went in to eat.