Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Has it happened to you that you see something all your life and then one day you see it as if for the first time, for what it is, the essential, the real? It happened to me. In the bathtub. Thanks to N.

N. loves music. Which kid doesn’t, eh? I’m very wary of modern media, or rather what passes for kids’ content these days, so for the longest time, she had to make do with my singing. Then I gave in just a little bit and explored ‘kid-friendly’ videos on YouTube. I’ll explain my definition of kid-friendly in a future post. For now, let’s just say it doesn’t include most of what goes on kids TV. On YouTube, just when I was getting tired of looking at monotonously chirpy kids and flashy animations and noisy videos, I heard this laidback guitar strumming. Two kids and a dog in a boat, simply gazing, totally relaxed, gently floating down the stream. A soothing voice crooned, “Row, row, row your boat…” I was hooked.

Now, we’ve all heard the rhyme. It goes:

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream…
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream…

I remember singing it in school, vigorously rhyming ‘stream’ and ‘dream.’ I also remember N. got a dancing doll gift (Made in China) that blared ‘ROAROAROAYERBOAT” (worse when the battery ran low, then it went “RoooaaaRooaaaRoaaaaa”). I remember watching the same song on other YouTube channels with bright, happy children waving their hands and thought bubbles coming out of their heads. But somehow, these two little children and their dog floating down the stream, stuck with me.  N. loved them too, she is forever asking me to sing “YoYo,” the one with the “anna” and the “akka” and “Jimmy” (brother, sister and dog). So we sing it all the time, while dressing, while eating, while walking, while sleeping (yes) and then, in the tub, while bathing.

One day, I was making slow waves in the tub around N., singing “Row, row, row your boat” as usual when the epiphany hit me. This wasn’t really a children’s rhyme! This was the most profound life lesson anyone could get! It condensed all the wisdom through the ages in four simple, perfect lines. Short like the sutras, deceptively simple like zen. I’ll go so far as to say this rhyme is but the essence of the Bhagavad Gita and the upanishads. At this point, I totally understand how you might think I’m a wee bit off, but nevertheless, let me explain.

The first line says, row, row, row! Make the effort. Get ahead. Do what you have to do. You’re in a boat, so you’ve got to row. And keep at it. Go see things. Have experiences. Live your life. That’s standard advice. But the second line turns it on its head: gently down the stream. It has two messages. First, gently. Yes, make progress, get ahead, do things, live your life, but go about it gently. No clawing, no shoving, no pulling other people down. No hard punches. No ill-will. No haste. No grabbing. No spite. No clutching. No ugly marks on the sands of time. Be gentle.
 

The next message complements this: down the stream. Not against the current. With the current. Down the stream. Go with the flow. Row your boat all you can but go where life takes you. Don’t fight what you can’t fight. Let go. Let the stream of life guide you.  

Then the third line: merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Merry is such a merry word! It is more infectious than happy, more childlike than joyous, more soulful than cheerful. It is festive and celebratory. And ‘merrily,’ not once, but four times! Whatever happens in life, make merry. Live in the moment, enjoy it while it lasts. Celebrate life.

And the best for last: life is but a dream. And that’s why you should make merry. For all that you do and care and laugh and cry, know that this world and everything that you hold as real, is an illusion. A bubble. A speck in the eternity of space-time. A little wave that thought it was something else but went back to being the stream. If this isn’t sheer Vedanta, what is?

Ladies and gentlemen, here for your viewing pleasure, my new guide to Life, the Universe and Everything: