Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He is a contributing author to the Buddhist portal at Patheos. In one of his recent posts, he shares a powerful parable:
Here’s an updated parable from the ancient Taoist teacher, Chuang-Tzu: Imagine that you are floating in a canoe on a slow-moving river, having a Sunday picnic with a friend. Suddenly there is a loud thump on the side of the canoe, and it rolls over. You come up sputtering, and what do you see? Somebody has snuck up on your canoe, flipped it over for a joke, and is laughing at you. How do you feel?
OK. Now imagine the exact same situation again: the picnic in a canoe, loud thump, dumped into the river, coming up sputtering, and what do you see? A large submerged log has drifted downstream and bumped into your canoe. This time, how do you feel?
The facts are the same in each case: cold and wet, picnic ruined. But when you feel personally picked on, everything feels worse. The thing is, most of what bumps into us in life – including emotional reactions from others, traffic jams, illness, or mistreatment at work – is like an impersonal log put in motion by 10,000 causes upstream.
So What?
People, myself included, often take almost everything quite personally. Hanson suggests we should seek to intentionally endeavor to take things less personally and have compassion for ourselves and others.
- When have you been quick to assign blame or take something personally of late?
- Is not taking things so personally and being more compassionate toward yourself and others consistent with the Christian faith? If yes, how so? If no, why not?