The Well in Growth

Ask what state your well is in. Line 1's muddy well is the mind silted with trivialities — others' faults, small grievances, petty comparisons — until the water no one wants includes your own. Do not throw yourself away on the negligible; return to what matters, and the water clears by degrees, exactly as it was fouled. This may also be line 4's season: the well being lined, out of service for repair. Time spent on inner development that shows no visible yield is not lost. The stonework of character is what every future draught depends on, and wells are lined in private long before they are drunk from in public.

The next step is to draw. Line 5 holds the clear, cold spring — wisdom present, tested, drinkable — and its whole lesson is the verb: drink. Knowledge admired but never lived nourishes no one, least of all you. Line 3 names the quiet tragedy of the cleaned well left untouched because you cling to old patterns and dare not trust your own depths. Step past those defences. Trust what you have learned enough to live by it — that is the only difference between a spring and a picture of one. And because wells are communal, let others draw through you; what you have deepened is meant to feed more than yourself.