The meaning of water in our lives
Life begins in water

   We live in water for the first nine months of our lives. Deep inside our mother’s body we are conceived in the watery fluid of the fallopian tube. A journey by water, which lasts about a week, takes us from the site of conception towards the womb.

   There we implant in the soft nourishing walls of the uterus and we are surrounded by its fluids and by our mother’s blood which sustains us.

   Our earliest days are spent floating in a vast timeless ocean deep inside her body. During embryonic development, the head region of a human resembles that of a fish at a comparative stage.

   In the first 8 weeks of life we pass through the evolutionary stages of waterborn existence and retain many of these features later on, while others are adapted or disappear.

   In the months to follow, the constant caress of water on our skins gives us our very first sensations. the skin is the first sense organ to develop in utero. It originates from the same part of the embryo as the brain and nerves.

   Stimulation of its sensitive nerve endings by the warm amniotic fluid gives us the first touch on the surface of our bodies known as ‘primal skin feelings’. these sensations help to give us our first primitive sense of ‘self’, of who we are, of where we begin and end, of our own boundaries and our surroundings.

The water in our bodies

  Water is composed of two elements – each of its molecules is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Its shape depends upon the object which contains it and its consistency depend son its temperature, forming ice at its coldest and steam at its hottest. Water is within us and all around us – it is the essential elixir of life.

   Humans are, for the most part,m made of water. It is the most important, as well as the most abundant, inorganic substance in our bodies. About 60% of our red blood cells, 75% of our muscle tissue and 92% of our blood plasma is water and even our bones contain water.

   Water is a vital ingredient in the working mechanisms of our bodies. The oxygen we inhale and the carbon dioxide we exhale dissolves in the water of our blood and is thus transported between our body cells, the red blood cells and the lungs.

   Without water none of the chemical reactions which are essential to life could take place. It helps us to digest our food and excrete our waste products. It maintain our body temperature and lubricates our internal organs and joints. In short it is a vital element for our survival.

   The water in our cells, connective tissues and blood stream contains many dissolved minerals, mainly sodium and chloride. thus within every cell there is a miniature sea. Hence our tissue fluids and sweat are salty to the taste. Our very essence is an internal ocean.

The aquasphere

    Viewed from outer space it is easy to see hat around 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water. From space the earth is seen as a deep blue globe, capped by the white polar ice fields and flecked with wispy patches of soft white cloud beneath which the great continents look like islands.

   Ninety-seven percent of our planetary water supply is in the great oceans where life began, billions of years ago.

   The oceans teem with life, and are rich in minerals and organic substances. Ocean water is the home of the micro-flora, the tiny floating plants in the sea which generate most of the essential oxygen supply of our planet.

   Two percent of the plant’s water is frozen as ice or snow on the polar ice caps, glaciers and he snow and ice of the high mountain ranges. This water, in ice form, plays the vital role of acting as the planet's temperature moderator. By reflecting the sum’s heat the ice assists in cooling the earth.

   The water in freshwater lakes, streams and rivers and the ground makes up less than 1% and the rest moves through the atmosphere as rain, fog, mist, cloud and vapour. The water of the oceans and seas is drawn up by evaporation and then falls upon the land as rain in an eternal revivifying cycle.

   The primary use of of the planet’s water is to sustain all living matter, both animal and vegetable and, indeed, the planet itself. Fresh water is essential for all land-based creature and, like all life-forms, man cannot live without it.