If you have known me for any length of time at all, you may have heard my "Row Your Own Boat" speech. I have to first give credit where credit is due, my sister Lisa came up with this life lesson. And I then ran with it and shared it with just about everyone who would listen to me. My kids know it because I have said it to them ad-nauseam. I apply it to everything:
"That's not your boat to row".
"Row you own boat".
"You are letting someone else row your boat."
"Never take on someone else's oars and row their boat for them."
"Never hand your oars over to someone else."
"Make your own path. Don't assume you have to follow everyone else's boat."
"Sounds to me like you need to kick a few people out of your boat."
You get the idea
The truth of who you really are is often hiding in plain sight. The cosmic clues are really everywhere: in music, books, paintings, movies, poems, songs, plays, sculpture, photographs, etc. Your very best clues to this profound wisdom, however, are sometimes hidden in the unlikeliest of places.
For example, do you think that you could ever write something that would be the perfect expression of the greatest wisdom, i.e. the very core of reality, itself? Then, in that same description, could you also include the most practical way of living out your day-to-day existence in the light of such an awesome truth?
One more condition: Could you also please limit your summary of these profound teachings…both spiritual and psychological…to only eighteen words? That’s right: only 18 simple words!
“Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.”
In the first line, the song implies that you’re making some kind of journey over water in “…your boat.” Most importantly, however, the line begins by repeating the very same word (“Row, row, row…”) three times and reminding you that, on this journey, you’ll need to expend your energy, persistence and ongoing effort.
In the second line, however, the song implies that you shouldn’t really be “pushing the river.” Instead, it suggests that you should be performing all of this rowing activity very “gently.” Not with anger or resistance or by using brute force, but “gently” which means, according to the dictionary, with an “easy grace” and with both “courtesy and kindness.”
The second part of the line reminds you that, while you’re gently rowing along, your boat is still headed in a particular direction, specifically downstream. It doesn’t suggest that you could go against the current or even across it. Instead, the line implies that, like it or not, your boat is still going “…down the stream.”
And, since it’s carrying you along some predetermined route there’s no reason to struggle against where it’s taking you. So, the first two lines of the song suggest that you definitely need to make an ongoing effort on your own behalf (“Row, row, row…”), but, on the other hand, you also need to be willing to surrender to the inevitability of the whole process.
Now the third line is really the key: it tells you not only how you should perform all of this “rowing” but what you need to be feeling in your heart while you’re doing it. The song suggests, quite frankly, that you should be “merry” that is, “happy” and “joyous.” Not only does it say “merrily” once, but, for greater emphasis (and to make sure that you really get the point), this same word is repeated a total of four separate times.
In asking you to be “merry” as you’re rowing “gently down the stream,” the song implies that your attitude and behavior should be full of fun and laughter, festive and even celebratory.
The big punch line, of course, comes in the last five words: “Life is but a dream.” At the end, it seems, none of it has ever been “real.” There never was either a “real” boat or a “real” passenger. There wasn’t any “water” and there wasn’t any actual journeying down a stream to some final destination. The last line plainly suggests, instead, that ALL of it…boat, passenger, water and the journey…has only been a manifestation of your own mental process.
thepoint. Your boat, your journey, your destiny; it's all there. By taking on a passenger we are inserting ourselves into someone else's business either by force or by request. Either way, it's not a good practice in the long term.
Of course I'm not advocating that you sail through life ignoring others when they need support in good times and in bad. I'm just saying that at times we have a tendency to keep someone in our boat for too long. Often, when my children are worried about something that they can't control, I say, "Sweetie, that's just not your boat to row." And, for me, that is the most important time to remember it. When we are faced with life events that are out of our control it's healthy to take a deep breathe and say to yourself, "That's not my boat to row". Try it sometime. It's incredibly freeing.
Isn’t it absolutely incredible that such profound wisdom could be successfully distilled down into only 18 simple words, and that it’s now become cleverly disguised as a simple little ditty that’s sung with our friends around a campfire?
I dedicate this piece to my brother-in-law Dan. I have told him this theory of mine probably more times than he wanted to hear it. But recently he gave me one of the greatest complements by telling me that he considers it to be in the top of the best advice that he has ever been given and he passes it along all the time. How often do you get to hear that something that you said stuck with someone in such a profound way? I have tons of sayings and tons of theories and now I know that at least one of them will live on possibly long after I am gone.
