dumb stuff i love

Check this out: water blessing labels.

There is a fellow who concluded after a five-year study that water molecules can be influenced by positive thoughts. That seems like an awful reach to me, but I've not read the book, so I can't fairly comment on the validity of that theory (I'm one of those annoying people who tries to suspend judgment until I actually understand what someone is saying). However, some entrepreneurs took this already questionable idea and stretched it beyond recognition, asserting that you can "turn your drinking water into liquid prayers!" by means of clear plastic labels with inspiring words pasted on your water bottle.

I am not making this up. I mean, I am not making up the existence of Water Blessing Labels. Not only do they exist on the web, I saw some in a store yesterday.

And I actually thought they were quite naively charming.

Not being willing, however, to have ten dollars naively charmed out of my pocket, I loaded my labelmaker with the black lettering/clear tape cartridge and started making labels of my own. Now I have my desktop water bottle adorned with the brahma viharas at no extra cost. We'll see if "liquid mindfulness," in this carefully controlled experiment, benefits me next week.

My hypothesis, which should be painfully obvious, is that it won't make a damned bit of difference, at least directly. Pasting the brahma viharas on a water bottle is the exact antithesis of the method by which their effectiveness is cultivated. For a thought to change one's mind, it has to be fixed in one's mind in the first place, not fixed on one's water bottle. If having inspirational text on my water bottle prompts me to keep positive thoughts in mind, yes, it will have an effect, but the effect is produced by the effort of thought prompted by the words, not the words themselves. And if I do not cultivate positive mental states unless reminded by my water bottle, I probably need more profound changes in my life than an upgraded drinking vessel alone.

Now I wonder...if positive thoughts have an influence on water molecules, how about negative thoughts? And does the drinker of the water have to be aware of the positive or negative words associated with the water or other beverage? The possibilities range from putting, say, "confusion" on the bottom of the coffee mugs opposing counsel gets during a deposition, to, oh, "cursing" someone's water system by scrawling the word "disease" on their water main. Sounds really creepy, but I'm not sure that a mere word is any match for chlorine.

Namaste.