I thought this was an elegant way of saying this (translated from French). -Terran
I stumbled upon the empty boat theory and since then, I haven’t looked at people the same way... Imagine you’re sailing peacefully down a river. Suddenly, a boat crashes into yours.
Your first reflex?Anger.
You look up, ready to curse out the idiot who just rammed into you.
But you discover the boat is empty.
No one to yell at. No one to blame. No one to unload your anger on.
And almost instantly, something shifts inside you.
The impact is exactly the same, though. Your boat was hit in just the same way.
The only thing that’s gone is your need to find someone to blame.
This old parable, attributed to Zhuangzi, made me realize something pretty mind-blowing about how we relate to others.
A huge part of our suffering doesn’t just come from what people do to us.
It comes from the intentions we attribute to them.
Someone doesn’t reply to your message: they’re ignoring you.
Someone cuts you off in traffic: they’re an asshole.
Someone’s cold with you: they don’t like you.
Someone doesn’t greet you: they despise you.
The problem is, we never truly see what’s going on in other people’s heads.
So our brain fills in the blanks. And usually, it fills them however it can—and often in the worst possible way.
We think we’re the main character in a scene that, sometimes, had absolutely nothing to do with us.
That person who spoke to you sharply might have just gotten some bad news.
The one who’s stopped replying might be going through something you know nothing about.
The one who cut you off probably didn’t even notice you.
And obviously, that doesn’t mean you have to accept or excuse everything.
It just means that before letting someone get inside your head and mess with your inner state, you can ask yourself one incredibly simple question:
What if the boat was empty?
Since I grasped that, I’ve been trying to let more boats sail by.
Because we lose a phenomenal amount of inner peace battling intentions that we sometimes invented ourselves...
- The Contemplator
