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The Wake Doesn’t Drive the Boat
Deciding where to go next
A “wake” is water displaced from under a moving boat. In one of the late motivational speaker Wayne Dyer’s talks in his seminar How to Get What You Really, Really, Really, Really Want, he asked: “Is it possible for the wake to drive the boat?” No, he declared. As we age, we develop narratives about how past misfortunes limit our choices. Dyer says these narratives are false excuses since our pasts can’t control where we go next. The wake does not drive the boat.
It’s a scientific reality, and it’s also a proverb. It’s hard to defend strict formulations of scientific facts and of proverbs too (though for different reasons). Regarding the subtleties of the proverb: While some parts of our pasts are easy to let go of, others aren’t and so they continue to influence us. We’re not always aware of what parts of our pasts we’re clinging to. Anyway, it isn’t always our fault for allowing our own pasts to dictate what we do; we live in society, and others hold us to our pasts, whether they intend to or not, whether we like it or not.
Besides, right now, I’m a terrible example of not letting the wake drive the boat. I’m rewriting this article that I originally wrote five years ago. The reason I’d written about Wayne Dyer was that I’d had a cassette tape of one of his talks about dissatisfaction while I was in college. And the reason Dyer gave this other talk about the wake not driving the boat is that he heard it from Alan Watts, one of whose Taoism-inspired books I’d read in high school. I can’t stay away from these names because I recognize them. My own wake is driving what I’m doing right now. Our collective wake is driving us.
Does the Shell Drive the Snail?
No. The snail secretes its shell, and there it is. I don’t know how a snail drives, but there it goes.
We’re Driving Ourselves
The boat’s got its own engine. When we don’t like the direction we’re sailing, we blame it on our own…
