Leave the Canoe Behind

What got you here won’t (necessarily) help get you where you're headed.

This post was originally published on March 9, 2012.

A young traveler approached a river while on her journey.

From all appearances, it was too deep to ford and too long to get around. After doing a bit of scouting, she discovered a canoe that had been left by another traveler. In haste, she grabbed the canoe and paddled to the other side.

As soon as she landed, she thought: “I’m lucky that I found that canoe! I couldn’t have crossed the river without it. I better take it with me just in case there’s another river along the way.” So she picked up the canoe and carried it with her.

After three days of travel while carrying the canoe, she was exhausted. She happened upon an old traveler who was bewildered by the young woman carrying the canoe. “Why are you carrying a canoe?” the old traveler asked.

“A few days ago, I came across a river that I would have been unable to cross without this canoe. I didn’t know whether I would come to another crossing, so I carried it with me.”

“Ah!”, the old traveler exclaimed. “The next river like that in the direction you’re going is fifteen days away. It would take you less time to build a canoe when you get there than to carry this one with you — it’s time to leave the canoe behind.”

With that, the young traveler dropped the canoe. She immediately saw that what got her here wasn’t needed to get her there.

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It’s not uncommon for us to carry the canoes of our past with us along our daily journeys. We pick up a belief that served us well at one point — but we continue to believe it even when it doesn’t match reality anymore.

Or perhaps we continue to react and behave as we did when we were younger, even though those behaviors keep us from connecting with the people we’re connecting with today.

Or maybe it’s the habits and skills that applied in one domain or time in our life but don’t fit us now.

All of these things are canoes that can weigh us down. It’s completely natural for us to want to carry them — after all, they were components of good or successful experiences at one time, and we don’t want to recreate the solution all over again.

What we often don’t realize, though, is that it’s not the manifestation of the solution that’s important — it’s the recognition we will find or create a solution when we need it.

Knowing that you can find or build a canoe, whether that canoe is a certain belief, habit, system, or skill when you need it, is the key thing to remember. When you get to that next river, build your canoe.

Until then, leave the canoe behind.

What got you here won’t (necessarily) get you there.