While playing on a hot summer day, two young children notice a dripping garden hose. The drop-by-drop trickle provides them with a desire for a real thirst-quenching gulp. But as they grab the hose from one another they feel the lack of real fulfilment.
They spend all their time rather than using their creativity to follow the hose to its source and turn on the faucet.

If one does discover the faucet, because they are so small it may take both of them to turn on the valve. If they’ve spent enough time fighting, they may be so alienated from one another that the thought of working together never occurs to them.

This sounds like a case of simple early-childhood foolishness and lack of understanding. Could it be that adults and nations have similar problems? It seems that only after great pain and struggle are we willing to let go of our obsession with self-preservation and let life flow a little. The world of scarcity and struggle that we imagine for ourselves becomes a self-fulfilling reality.

Magic of Conflict by Thomas Crum