From Mob to Team - The Journey Of The Waves

It is amazing how we can see something all our lives and in one sudden moment of clarity we are able to see a completely different aspect of the same scene. This is what happened to me as I watched the journey of the flood waters from the mountains to the sea. Suddenly the wave became an analogy for a person and the behaviour of the waves an analogy of human behaviour in groups.

As the flood waters tore down the mountains one could see their anger. The mud made them sinister and ugly, their ferocity made them lethal. I realized that the waves were at that moment behaving like a mob, ugly and dangerous. All that the water knew at that time was to make its way down, it tore down anything that stood in its way, no structure or bank could not contain it - the torrent carved its own path leaving behind devastation and brutal destruction, just like sanity does not prevail when a mob becomes unruly. For a mob long-term vision or logic is alien. So too in the case of the flood waters in KP. The water had one short-term goal i.e. get down to the plains and it took any path it could to achieve it.

As the water reached the plains something miraculous happened. Its very appearance changed. The individual waves were gentler, the surface was much calmer. The collective water still had tremendous force, even more so than when it was rushing down the mountains, but the appearance was gentler. Its psyche had changed! From a mob the waves had suddely become a team. Each wave unremarkable and small, but their collective power was awe inspiring. The waves had now a vision - to reach the sea. The strategy to reach the sea was also established - to follow the centuries old natural path that waves of the mightly Indus had always taken. As I observed the waves I was fascinated at how aligned they were - the hallmark of a good team. Each wave was bobbing up and down and moving in the same direction.

One may ask if this was a team then why did it cause so much destruction? My reply to that is it didn't! The destruction was caused by humans not allowing it to follow its strategy i.e. its path. When their strategy seemed to fail, the waves did exactly what any good team would do in a similar situation, they formulated an new strategy and travelled along the path of least resistance with the ultimate goal of reaching the sea.