Seen this way, we might be inclined that say our self is part of a larger, perhaps divine or cosmic self. Our little, individual self and the big, cosmic self share an essential nature, both being made of the same substance, water. This way of thinking was characteristic of the classic Hinduism at the time Buddha began his quest for enlightenment. Buddha's teaching was different. He would say, look at each snowflake.
None is identical to any other.
Each may last only a moment. Here the self is the sum of all these individual, transitory snowflakes. That is, they have no fixed, unchanging essential nature of any kind. It is as if each snowflake not only had a unique shape, different from every other snowflake, but was composed of its own unique elements as well. Each dharma, each moment's flash of existence, shares with each other moment, only the fact of its impermanence.