Row, Row, Row Your Boat

It’s a nursery rhyme. Which means that you’ve heard (or sung) it a million times, but have you ever really stopped to consider the meaning of the words?

Our lives are like little boats on the water: if there’s a storm, we row like hell to keep from capsizing; but if there’s just a gentle breeze, we float along without much effort, basking in the sunlight. Lovely.

The point of any boat ride, from our logical point of view, is to get from point A to point B in one piece. Not all boat rides are the Henley Royal Regatta. But we like to think that they are.

Courtesy of dailymail.co.uk

Gently Down The Stream

What if we relaxed instead of racing about like everything depends on our winning? Wouldn’t that be better?

In the Beatles’ song, Tomorrow Never Knows, John Lennon set out a meditation sequence:

Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream
It is not dying, it is not dying

Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void
It is shining, it is shining

Yet you may see the meaning of within
It is being, it is being

Love is all and love is everyone
It is knowing, it is knowing…

… that ignorance and hates may mourn the dead
It is believing, it is believing

But listen to the colour of your dreams
It is not living, it is not living

So play the game “Existence” to the end…
… Of the beginning, of the beginning
Of the beginning, of the beginning
Of the beginning, of the beginning
Of the beginning, of the beginning

There’s some good advice here.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily

Looks like the writer ran out of words to say, but the point is clear: if we approach our lives with happy hearts, everything become more positive, more enjoyable.

⁴For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. ⁵For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. ⁶Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. ⁷Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. ⁸Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. ⁹Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. ¹⁰Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. (Ecclesiastes 9:4-10)

Amen to that.

Life Is But A Dream

Courtesy of Paige Bartholomew

So, here’s the point of this nursery rhyme: once we’re dead, our lives will be forgotten, like a bad dream, when we wake up in the morning.

Could it not be any clearer? No matter what our ‘sins’ (read, ‘errors’) are during life, they will not matter to the great scheme of Life. They are the shade that gives the differing hues to the colour of life’s tapestry. We will not have ‘ruined’ anything. We will have added to the overall picture.

After all, we are co-creators with God. The picture is of us all, together.