Row Your Boat 

So I was giving my little one a bath and we were singing, ok well I was (badly) she was wiggling in the water and singing as best a 1 1/2 year old can....

In the middle of a rousing rendition of Row, Row, Row Your Boat my son walks in...

"What does that song mean anyway" he asks...

and I replied that I didn't think it meant anything...

to wit he said, in typical 9 year old "tude fashion "everything means something mooom!" and he heads out.

well how do you like that?

So I went online to see what exactly, if anything, Row Row Row Your Boat meant & I came up with everything from Buddhist meditation references to people saying anyone looking for meaning in a child's song needs to be medicated.

In my googling, I found this, and I thought I'd share, well, just cuz I like it...

Finding Meaning in Simplicity

October 04, 2006 by Gene Teglovic  

What do you think about, especially when you’re lying awake in bed, when the world around you is sleeping? Sometimes I think about how the simplest things in our existence can open up layers and layers of worlds upon worlds, which we never notice. And, how no two people see the same thing the same way. Like this simple little song we all sang as kids:

Row row row your boat

gently down the stream,

Merrily merrily merrily merrily

life is but a dream.

A simple kids’ song, or a metaphor for life? Depends on your view. 

Row row row

Do your thing. Do it, do it, do it, until you master it. In the east they’d call this your dharma, or purpose in life. Do it well. Be impeccable. Keep doing it, don’t give up. And when you’ve mastered this stream, there are millions of different streams and rivers and lakes and oceans to row in. Find the next one that tickles your fancy, and start rowing again. Keep rowing.

YOUR boat

Not your wife’s or husband’s or partner’s boat. Not your kid’s boat. Not your neighbor’s boat or your co-worker’s boat or your mom’s or dad’s boat or your friend’s boat.. YOUR boat. You can’t solve anyone else’s problems or do their trips for them. You can’t bloom flowers. Sure, if you want to, you can keep the soil moist and put the pot in the sun and take it in when it gets cold. But the flower has to bloom itself. YOUR boat.

Gently

We struggle a lot in life don’t we? I know I do. And 99% of the time, it was for naught. Things came out the way they came out anyway. Did my angst and stress and struggle help? I’m not talking about a little motivation, which can be good. I’m talking about how hard we can make things for ourselves and everyone around us, just because we’re so hard. Can we be a bit kinder? I don’t mean become a doormat that people step on. Just a bit…. Gentler.

DOWN the stream

Other than spawning salmon, we get along best with nature when we go down the stream, instead of trying to paddle up all the time. This is a bit Zen, but really, isn’t most of the struggle in our lives caused by our not accepting things the way they are? The stream is flowing down, not up. I’m not saying don’t change things that you can (12-step = Zen in case you didn’t know). Yea, sometimes you have to go up the stream. But I’m talking about the living hell we can create in our own minds because we think things “should” be different than the way they ARE. Accept it first, then you have a prayer of changing it. Or not. But from a point of acceptance, you’re on a ground with the best perspective for change. Down the stream.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily

Notice merrily four times? We don’t laugh enough in life! In cosmic terms, no matter what is happening to you, it’s not such a federal case. Someone, somewhere, is going to laugh at you for your pettiness, compared to what they’re going through. I laugh at myself every time I look in the mirror, thinking I have a clue. I love seeing kids laugh at nothing. What happened, why don’t I do that any more? I’d live in a comedy club if they’d give me a cot. We heal ourselves physically and emotionally by laughing. God (or whatever you want to call that divine intelligence that runs through us) has a great sense of humor; she smacks me now and then to make me laugh, and to tell me not to be so stupid. Merrily…

Life is but a dream.

Yes, it is. That which entered me when I popped out of my mama’s belly is having a great ride. And in cosmic terms, it’ll leave me pretty soon. At the moment it’s in its little soul cage being held down by the spinning force of this little rock whizzing around a little yellow star tucked away in the corner of an insignificant spiral arm of one of billions of little old galaxies. The Universe will hardly notice when it goes out of me and “I” become fertilizer. The Universe will hardly notice when the sun goes out. What if our waking state is really the dream, and the dream is the “reality?” Makes as much sense to me as anything else. Why do dreams seem so real? Why do I feel like I’m dreaming half the time in my waking state? Life IS but a dream.

A spider just crawled across my screen. He stopped for second, I swear he was looking at me. Wow, he’s beautiful. Or is it a she? Look at those furry legs, what animates this little creature and motivates it to spin a web? What is a web made of? Who decided spiders were gonna spin webs, why don’t they just live in holes like other little creatures? Where did he come from? Where will he go when he dies? Not his little meat puppet, I mean that force that is making him move? Never really thought about spiders before. Hmm.. An icky spider? Or a miracle? Depends on your view. :)

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Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.