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An idea I’ve come across in multiple contexts, to be like water means to be flexible rather than forceful to overcome some challenge. Water yields, but surrounds. In parenting when dealing with tantrums, I find that when I meet my child’s frustration with my own, things escalate and get worse. But when I am like water and accept their frustration, they often tire themselves out and the situation resolves itself.
Examples
Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself.
― Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching
Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
― Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, Verse 78
You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.
—Bruce Lee
We know that the water principle is every bit as elemental as rock, and that its nature is stronger than rock in the sense that water wears down rock. Water also has the enchanting quality of receptivity. It parts to allow anything in, then resumes itself. If you hit a mountain or a rock with a hammer, in spite of its hardness, or actually because of it, the rock chips, fragments, and breaks apart. But if you hit the ocean or a pond with a hammer, all you get is a rusty hammer. A key virtue of water power reveals itself in this.
—John Kabat-Zinn, Lake Meditation