The Empty Boat

A man was crossing a river in his small boat one morning. The river was busy with traffic. The man was already late, and irritated.

Suddenly, another small boat appeared in the mist and crashed into his. The collision spun his boat sideways. Water sloshed over the side.

The man was furious. He stood up in the boat, his fists clenched, ready to shout at the careless rower of the other boat.

He looked across.

The other boat was empty.

It had broken loose from its moorings somewhere upstream and drifted into him. There was no one to be angry at.

The man, his fists still clenched, stood for a moment in the silence after the crash. The anger had nowhere to go. Slowly, he sat back down. He took a breath. He picked up his oar. He continued across the river.

What the story is for

The Zhuangzi was a Daoist philosopher who wrote, two thousand and four hundred years ago, about something most of us still struggle with: how much of our anger is, on inspection, anger at empty boats.

The driver who cut you off was not, in fact, a person targeting you. They were a person having a bad morning, who was perhaps not even thinking about your existence.

The colleague who sent the curt email was probably not deciding to be cruel. They were, more likely, also overwhelmed.

The friend who has not replied is not necessarily abandoning you. They may be drowning in their own week, with no boat, in their own river.

Most of the boats that drift into us in a given day are empty. We almost always assume they are not.

The teaching, more carefully

Zhuangzi was not saying that no one ever means us harm. Some people do. Some of the boats, occasionally, have someone in them who is in fact rowing carelessly or with malice.

The point is more subtle. The point is that our reaction is the same in both cases — and that the reaction, when applied to the empty boats (which are most of them), is wasted.

If we could greet most of the boats as empty — as forces of weather, drifting through our lives without animus — we would save ourselves a great deal of anger.

This is not naive. It is just accurate. Most of the slights you feel today will not have been intended.

A small practice

When you feel the small flare of irritation today — at a driver, a colleague, a stranger, a friend — try this: what if that boat is empty?

Sometimes you will be wrong. Sometimes the boat has a careless rower, and you will need to deal with them.

But often, the boat will be empty. The flare will subside. You will continue across the river.

Two thousand four hundred years ago, Zhuangzi watched a man on a river and noticed something true about how humans get angry. The river is the same. The empty boats are still drifting toward us.

We can choose, at least sometimes, to let them.