COMPLICATING A SIMPLE CHILDRENS RHYME :).. ( have you noticed that the posts that have titles containing suggestions of difficulty and conflict get the most hits!?!) I wonder what this might infer about we, the readers of this site ????

THAT YOU READ ON IN ENJOYMENT IS MY HOPE :) BE LOVED 

Row row row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream is a simple children’s tune. Yet within its simplicity there exists a deeply powerful wisdom.

Firstly this tune is typically sung in a trinity of rounds. Songs sound sublime when they’re sung in some sync with the souls that surround.

That said each person is slightly separated in space and time. We’re each a little different! Don’t fear or fight with those who’re different. This difference is the spice that makes life taste full of interest.

Regarding the rowing: life is an endless elegant effort. If you don’t row your boat you’ll find you just float in a mirthless unmoving miasma. Living life well requires a little effort and skill.

The next line, “gently down the stream” suggests that the effort and skill life requires of you is well within your ability. Indeed it’s not so great a stretch to say this line contains a reassuring promise.

Firstly the boat in which you’re afloat is in a stream that’s flowing down. There is a direction to the journey of your life. As you follow the direction that the rhyme reasons you’ll find your passage smooth.

Don’t struggle against the flow. Just go gently, rowing easily to hold your way.  The passage of your existence is fatefully assured. You will eventually find your way to the sea.

Of the quartet of “merrily’s” much could be made, but that might make their message fade. Simply stop the “when are we going to get there’s”. You are already there! The end of every journey is the start of the next, so learn to be merry as the endlessly exquisite scenery unfolds.

The last line is in fact the most profound. What it is you think you are, or should be, is an illusion that reinforces pain. If you hold to this illusion you’ll always live, then die, in a desperate state of immanence never able to find grace.

A sagely cliché suggests the more you know the less you know so follow your heart more readily than your head. You knew more about life as a child.

Martin Hunter Jones is an honourary member of the Australian Counselling Association