The Water Ain’t Dirty, Baby… It’s You
- Kateb-Nuri-Alim
- 10 hours ago
- 7 min read
Author’s Opening Note
Here’s something most folks don’t know, and if they do, they don’t sit with it long enough to let it sting a little. Fish don’t leave the tank because the water gets dirty. They suffer in silence until somebody with sense decides to clean it. Now ain’t that something. A whole life floating in mess, not because the tank is broken, but because nobody stopped long enough to do the work.
Now let me go on and say this before you get comfortable and start pointing fingers at your neighbor, your ex, your boss, or that one cousin who always borrow money and suddenly forget your name when it’s time to pay it back. This ain’t about them. You can sigh if you need to. Matter fact, go ahead and sigh real loud. I’ll wait.
Alright, now that that’s out the way, let’s be honest. Some of us been switching tanks like we changing shoes. New city. New job. New relationship. New church. New friends. Same spirit though. Same habits. Same hurt. Same mess floating around in that water. And then we got the nerve to say, “I don’t know why this keep happening to me.” Baby, you brought the water with you.
See, down here in New Orleans, we know a thing or two about water. We know when it’s calm, when it’s rising, and when it’s about to take everything if you don’t respect it. And life, well, life got a funny way of teaching you the same lesson until you finally sit still long enough to learn it. You can run uptown, downtown, cross the river, even try your luck out of state. But wherever you go, there you are, carrying that same bucket of cloudy water like it’s some kind of family heirloom.
Now I ain’t here to beat you up. I’m here to sit with you. Maybe laugh a little. Maybe cry a little. Maybe look at some things we been avoiding like that junk drawer we swear we gone clean one day. You know the one. Been saying that since 2008.
This reflection right here, it ain’t about buying a new tank. It ain’t about pretending everything is fine either. It’s about rolling up your sleeves, looking at your life, and saying, “Yeah… this right here need cleaning.” And then actually doing it.
So take a breath. Get comfortable. And don’t get too defensive when you start recognizing yourself in these words. That just mean it’s working.
The Water Ain’t Dirty, Baby… It’s You
A Life Reflection on Soul Cleaning, Staying Put, and the Trouble with Running from Yourself.
By Kāteb Shunnar
Magnolia Henry used to sit on her porch every evening like clockwork, rocking slow, sipping something sweet, watching the world pass like it owed her an apology. And if you asked her, she would tell you plain as day, “Ain’t nothing wrong with my life, it’s just these people in it.” Now she said that so often, it started sounding like scripture to her. Problem was, Magnolia had changed neighborhoods three times, jobs twice, and men… well, we ain’t even gone count them. And somehow, every place she went ended up feeling the same.
Now Scarlett Collins, that was Magnolia’s friend, or at least she tried to be. Scarlett had a way of telling the truth that felt like stepping on a Lego barefoot. Painful, but necessary. One evening she sat next to Magnolia and said, “You ever notice how your story don’t change, just the characters?” Magnolia laughed it off at first. Said Scarlett was being dramatic. But that laugh had a crack in it. A small one. The kind you don’t hear unless you listening close.
See, the thing about life is it don’t shout at you first. It whispers. It taps you on the shoulder. It nudges you in your spirit. And when you keep ignoring it, that’s when it start throwing bricks.
Samuel Sawyer knew all about bricks.
Life had been throwing them at him like he owed a debt he couldn’t remember signing up for. Lost his job, lost his peace, almost lost himself trying to prove he was alright. And every time something fell apart, he packed up whatever pieces he had left and went somewhere new, thinking a fresh start would fix everything. But everywhere he landed, it was like déjà vu wearing a different outfit.
He once told Mary Catherine Evans, “I think I just got bad luck.” Mary Catherine looked at him the way only somebody who done their own inner work can look at you. Calm, but piercing. She said, “That ain’t bad luck, Samuel. That’s unclean water.”
Now Samuel ain’t like that answer. Not one bit. Because it meant the problem wasn’t outside. It meant it was him. And let’s be real, ain’t nobody lining up to hear that. We’d rather blame the job, the city, the timing, anything but ourselves.
But Mary Catherine didn’t press him. She just planted the seed and let it sit.
That’s how truth works sometimes. It don’t force itself on you. It waits until you tired enough to listen.
Back on Magnolia’s porch, things started shifting, slow like humidity creeping into your bones. She began noticing little patterns. Same arguments, different faces. Same disappointments, new settings. Same emptiness, just dressed up nicer. And one night, sitting there with no distraction, no noise, just her and her thoughts, it hit her.
“It ain’t the tank.”
Now don’t get it twisted. That realization ain’t come with no fireworks or heavenly choir. It came quiet. Almost uncomfortable.
And that’s where the real work begins.
Because it’s easy to run. Oh, we good at that. We will run from accountability like it’s chasing us with a knife. We will upgrade everything except our mindset. New furniture, same attitude. New phone, same communication issues. New relationship, same emotional baggage unpacked right in the living room.
And then we wonder why everything feel familiar.
Scarlett told Magnolia one day, “You ever clean a fish tank?” Magnolia shook her head. Scarlett said, “It ain’t pretty. You gotta take everything out. The rocks, the plants, all that pretty stuff. You gotta deal with the murky water, the smell, the mess. But when you done, everything look different. Same tank though.”
That stuck with Magnolia. Because she realized she had been decorating her mess instead of cleaning it.
Now let’s pause right there, because that’s something a lot of us guilty of. We decorate dysfunction. Make it look cute. Dress it up. Smile through it. Meanwhile, underneath all that, the water still dirty.
Samuel reached his breaking point one night sitting alone in a quiet apartment that didn’t feel like home. And for once, he didn’t look for a way out. He sat in it. The discomfort. The silence. The truth.
And that’s when he started seeing things different.
He saw how he avoided hard conversations. How he carried old hurt into new spaces. How he expected peace without doing the work to create it.
And it wasn’t pretty. Growth rarely is.
Mary Catherine told him, “You ain’t broken, Samuel. You just got some cleaning to do.” And something about that felt lighter.
Now let me tell you something old, something whispered through time like a secret passed over gumbo pots and porch rails.
Long time ago, down by the river, there was a man folks called Old Laveau Joe. Now Joe had a tank filled with the most beautiful fish you ever seen. Colors dancing like Mardi Gras beads in sunlight. But over time, the water got cloudy. People told Joe to clean it, but he said, “Nah, I’ll just get a new tank.” So he did.
Moved the fish. Same thing happened.
Again and again.
One day, an old woman came by, looked at all them tanks lined up, and said, “Baby, you ain’t got a tank problem. You got a cleaning problem.” Joe laughed. Thought she was crazy.
But that night, one of the fish died.
And it broke something in him.
So he finally cleaned the tank. Really cleaned it.
And when he did… everything changed.
Same tank. Clean water.
And folks say after that, Joe wasn’t the same man. He became patient. Present. Attentive. Because cleaning that tank didn’t just save the fish. It saved him.
And ain’t that just like us.
We keep buying new tanks, thinking the problem is everything else. When really, we just avoiding the work.
And just when Magnolia thought she had figured herself out, life humbled her again.
Because growth come in layers.
She found herself in another familiar argument, another familiar feeling. But this time, she paused.
“Here we go again,” she whispered.
And that moment… that was everything.
Because when you see your pattern while you in it, not after, not days later, but right there in it… that’s transformation knocking.
Samuel had his moment too. Old feelings came back. Doubt. Fear. That voice.
But this time, he stayed.
Sat with it.
And realized… he wasn’t running from places.
He was running from himself.
Scarlett had her own quiet revelation walking through the city one night.
“I’m tired of pretending,” she admitted to herself.
Because some of us not running physically.
We running emotionally.
Hiding behind smiles.
Avoiding our truth.
And that’s dirty water too.
Now let me say something with love and just a pinch of sarcasm.
Some of y’all still reading this thinking your situation special.
Like your mess got VIP access to being unfixable from the inside.
Come on now.
We all got work to do.
This ain’t about blaming yourself for everything.
But it is about taking responsibility for your healing.
Because if you don’t heal it, you carry it.
And if you carry it, it shows up everywhere.
So what do we do?
We start small.
We get honest.
We clean.
Not once.
But daily.
And yeah, you gone slip.
You gone catch yourself mid mess like, “Not again.”
But that’s alright.
Because growth ain’t perfection.
It’s awareness.
It’s choosing better a little quicker each time.
And over time, something beautiful happens.
You stop trying to escape your life.
And you start living in it.
Peacefully.
Honestly.
Fully.
Magnolia felt it first.
Samuel understood it next.
Scarlett embraced it.
Mary Catherine always knew it.
And now… you reading it.
So before you go looking for something new…
Pause.
Sit with yourself.
Ask the real questions.
And be ready for the answers.
Because they coming.
And when they do…
Don’t run.
Stay.
Clean.
Grow.
And watch your world change without you ever leaving it.
Because at the end of the day…
It was never about the tank.
It was always about the water.
Author’s Closing Words
If this touched your spirit, if it stirred something deep inside you, I’m asking you from a genuine place… please share this. Send it to someone who needs it. Speak on it. Let it travel.
And if you can, support the writer and the blog. This work comes from a real place, and I need your support to keep creating and sharing.
I appreciate you more than words can express.
Red Beans and Ricely Yours
Kāteb Shunnar
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