Friday, August 5, 2016

Row, Row, Row Your Boat





















Row, row, row, your boat,
Gently down the stream;
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream.


The most complex is often described best by the simple. The life we live these days is so strange and disjointed as to be nauseatingly complex. Even the wisest struggle to make sense of the current political scene. Add terrorism, mass shootings, police violence from both sides of the badge, and so much more, and my response is to break open a bag of chips and watch a movie. However, this is only a temporary distraction. Perhaps, seeing that which we can not change, there is a way to change how we see it.

Which brings me to this simple song. There is a principle in science known as Occam's Razor, which, simply put, means the answer to any problem is usually the most simple, often called the "elegant solution." For instance, one of the greatest discoveries of all time, the relationship of mass and energy as expressed in Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, E=MC2, is one of the simplest equations you'll ever see, but it resolves complex problems spanning the universe. So, we take this simple song and use a deeper meaning to resolve the problem of our complex modern living. Not completely, perhaps, but, hopefully, helpfully.

"Row, row, row, your boat."
Often when faced with unanswerable questions, and seemingly insurmountable challenges, we grab that bag of chips, and distract ourselves with some entertainment. And, when the bag is empty, and the movie done, there we are, still drifting along, and nothing has changed. We need to row, row, row, our boat. That is, do something. It might be merely a matter of expressing yourself on Facebook, writing a letter to the editor, sending out resumes. Just doing something -- anything -- can make you feel better. A letter of apology or forgiveness can make you feel a lot better. And sometimes, you even make a change, an improvement in life.

"Gently down the stream."
There are two simple thoughts here: row gently, and row downstream. Struggle rarely is profitable. Hard work will get you results, but struggle, hardly ever. Struggle gets in its own way, while hard work carries you forward. Say you are trying to open a door that's stuck. You yank the handle, kick the door, yell and scream at the door and question its nonexistent parenthood; that's struggling. Or, you examine the door, determine the lock has to come apart, and then off, and you begin the process of dealing with rusted screws, and warped wood, and, with hard work, get the door open. Which method do you usually use? Row you boat, but "gently" down the stream.

Which brings us to the second revelation: row downstream. Ever watched salmon swim upstream? Does that look like fun to you? And yet, we swim upstream way too often. This does not mean that you have to follow the crowd, and lemming-like, jump off the popular cliff. It means you use the flow to take you where you want to go. Consider the sailboat; it has to go with the flow of moving air currents, and yet, the sailor can tack with the wind and actually go the opposite direction, tacking back and forth. Another lesson of going with the flow, is to follow your guidance, rather than wrestling with it. Don’t deny it, fly with it. Or row with it.

"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily"
Give it a light touch. Continuing with the Facebook comment model, I sometimes find myself in an emotional knot, reading some comments that are laden with falsehoods and personal attacks. But, when I can remember, I give it a light touch, thinking to myself, “What an angry, pain ridden person,” which allows me to feel empathy for them and move on. This idea has moved me to stop watching TV news, and violent films. It’s hard to be merry when you are watching death and destruction for entertainment. It also moved me to spend time with other people who take a similar approach to life. I want to be with people who are “merry,” who lift me up.

"Life is but a dream."
Now we come to metaphysical answers for decidedly worldly problems, those seemingly insurmountable challenges in your personal world, and in the larger arena, a failure of society, of family, of the human race as a whole. How can there be so much murderous behavior in the world? The answer: there just is, and there always has been. It isn't any worse today than it has been all through history: The Dark Ages; both World Wars — all wars, actually — the unspeakable horrors visited upon our Native Americans and African Americans. There is nothing that I can find that excuses it, or dismisses it. But, if you believe that there is more to life than just this physical experience, then life can be seen as just a dream.

If you believe that life is lived in the physical as it is, and is all that there is, that it all ends there, and there is nothing after, then there is no hope of a solution that I can see, and I have great empathy for you. I would rather believe in something after this life and be wrong, than believe that there is nothing, and be right. For one thing, I can only be proved right; if I'm wrong, I'll never know it. But, if I am right, then all of this, from creation to whatever is the final act of what follows, is a dream, or much like it. Nothing in this life will survive, nothing of the ugly, nothing beautiful; nothing at all. At some point, the sun, having burnt itself nearly out, will expand to or beyond the earth, burning it all to a crisp. The Mona Lisa, the works of Bach, the statues that inspire us, art that captivates us, music that enthralls us; all gone.

That's the bad news. But, the good news — if you believe that something follows the reduction of everything to nothing — is that nothing dies; it all lives throughout eternity. For the ideas that produced the great works of art, music, painting, sculpture, every inspiring oration, loving touch and word, every good deed and loving action, will live as living ideas in the souls of everyone who has ever walked the earth. There is a line from a long-forgotten song, "Your sins, you will not remember, and all you will find there is love." This is truly what I believe. Life is but a dream, and when we wake, all of this, the madness, the meanness, the tragic and painful, will disappear as dew before the rising sun. And that which follows will be too wonderful for our poor human minds to comprehend. We must wait until our souls escape the bounds of our humanity, and expand into the infinite, and then we'll understand what it truly means, that "life is but a dream."