Philosophy of a Canoeist

(this excerpt is an AI written, condensed interpretation of Ray Bretzloff’s unfinished manuscript for Philosophy of a Canoeist)

How can anyone be expected to reach their potential with anchors dragging them down?

This is not a self-help book for those who wish to be led. There is nothing wrong with learning from mentors; I follow a few of my own. In fact, that is how society progresses—by building upon what others have discovered. But before devoting yourself to a guru, surrendering yourself to God, or buying into the latest motivational teaching, you must begin releasing the anchors to progress. Or, at the very least, identify what those anchors are.

Imagine taking every available course on how to improve your car’s engine, sharpen its handling, and navigate the road course called life—while leaving the parking brake on. How effective would all those new skills be?

There are wonderful teachers who offer motivation, practical skills, habits, spiritual guidance, and ways of understanding the ego. These are important subjects. But any teaching can only be so effective when it is built upon a foundation of confusion and uncertainty.

Other great teachers will give you answers. This book will help you find the questions.

Science and spirituality share a curious foundation. In science, it sounds something like this: nothing can ever be proven absolutely, only disproven. In spirituality, it is often expressed as: one can never know what is, only what is not.

Yet our logical culture constantly searches for proof of what is—even when two of our most prominent disciplines of discovery caution us against certainty. Is that contradiction part of human nature, or a product of our environment? I do not really know, and you will not find the final answer in this book. But from this book, perhaps you will find better questions.

For the visually inclined, consider a ship’s anchor.

When an anchor is resting on the seabed, it is obvious that the ship is limited in its movement. But suppose the crew cranks it up only a few feet. Freedom, right?

Not quite. There is still the drag of the chain and anchor through the water. The anchor catches on rises in the ocean floor and the remains of sunken ships. Momentum is wasted as it sways from one side of the vessel to the other.

Soon enough, though, the crew becomes accustomed to the swaying, lopsided steering, and intermittent catching along the seabed. This process is known as normalizing. When something is experienced repeatedly for long enough, it becomes the baseline—the norm.

This is what it is like to try to make progress while remaining limited. It becomes a constant battle. The ship was designed to do one thing and the anchor another; neither can function to its potential because each keeps interfering with the other.

If the crew eventually realizes there is a problem, they may begin to raise the anchor. Notch by notch, the chain becomes shorter. The ship grows quicker, more nimble, and more responsive. The crew gains greater command of its direction, and the vessel begins to use more of the capacity it always possessed.

There is danger, however, in bringing the anchor up too quickly. The crew needs time to relearn how to handle the ship. In light winds and calm water, the change may feel easy. When the weather turns, they may not be prepared to adapt.

More likely, an abrupt change will simply make the crew uncomfortable. The anchor will be lowered again to the depth they know—if not farther. The tragedy is that it may be much harder to persuade them to raise it a second time. They will remember the instability of the previous attempt. New members will learn from senior crew members that sailing with a lowered anchor is simply the way sailing is done.

Then a young buccaneer comes aboard. Perhaps this person has experienced what the ship can do, or at least carries the notion that they should try. Crew members young and old quickly relieve the newcomer of such false ideas.

“We tried raising the anchor—for a few minutes—and it was chaos. The ship was out of control. The crew were falling all over the place and had no idea what to do with themselves. It doesn’t work. Leave the anchor down and go swab the deck.”

Have you ever been one of those crew members—the person who falls into line, sides with the majority, and does not entirely understand the position being defended?

From outside the story, the absurdity of dragging an anchor is obvious. The cause is simple, physical, and perceptible. Most of us have dragged something through water and can predict the effect.

It is also easier to see because we are separate from the situation. Distance gives us perspective and offers our ego and identity enough room to lower their guard. From inside a situation, our view can become cloudy. From outside, patterns become clearer.

Imagine people watching from shore as the ship bangs, drags, dips, and lists across the water.

“Hey, Captain! Pull up your anchor. Sailing will be much better for you!”

“What do they know? This is how we have always sailed. A bunch of know-it-all landlubbers.”

The point is not to replace one inherited certainty with another. It is to ask what we have normalized, what quietly drags behind us, and what might become possible if we raised the anchor carefully enough to learn how the vessel was meant to move.