Miswanting: The Parable of the Raft

In Buddhism, The Parable of the Raft is quite famous. My 30 years of experience in the martial arts exposed me to this parable. Rather than rephrase it, I will repeat the text below as it comports with what I remember of it:

"Suppose a man were traveling along a path. He would see a great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. The thought would occur to him, 'Here is this great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. What if I were to gather grass, twigs, branches, & leaves and, having bound them together to make a raft, were to cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with my hands & feet?' Then the man, having gathered grass, twigs, branches, & leaves, having bound them together to make a raft, would cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with his hands & feet. Having crossed over to the further shore, he might think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having hoisted it on my head or carrying it on my back, go wherever I like?' What do you think, monks: Would the man, in doing that, be doing what should be done with the raft?"

"No, lord."

"And what should the man do in order to be doing what should be done with the raft? There is the case where the man, having crossed over, would think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having dragged it on dry land or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?' In doing this, he would be doing what should be done with the raft. In the same way, monks, I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas."

The usual conclusions, as drawn here, are that some things in life are useful for a while and must be discarded when no longer useful. But in many discussions over the years with colleagues, friends and families on their career journeys, I have internalized a very different take on this parable.

First, I interpret the character in this parable as making a journey. We don’t know for how long but let’s assume it is a long journey. The traveler runs into an obstacle or a challenge and comes up with a solution or tool, a raft that helps him overcome what was previously a formidable or overwhelming obstacle. While the parable is normally taught to remind us that some things are meant to be discarded rather than carried forever as a hindrance, my riff on this is something more ambiguous.

I think in life people sometimes do not fully understand the three main objects in the parable: the journey, the river or water and the raft. I think we often incorrectly assign things in our life as a journey, a river or a raft. A specific example may help.

Imagine a promising young IT star, who early in their career just appears to be a natural and is surpassing all the others. I had one of these working for me once. Early in her career she gave us her notice and said she was was now going to pursue her new career: to become a jazz musician. It was music that drew her into software engineering, which is often the case in the IT industry. She shifted from music to IT quite fabulously but longed to reunite with her love of music. Several years later I ran into her and discovered she was back working as a software engineer, doing fabulously again. I asked her what drew her back. She said he realized he was a better software engineer than a musician and that music was the bridge into that profession.

She thought music was her journey, the job she currently had in software engineering was an obstacle, and the money she set aside to make the shift was her raft. With some reflective hindsight she began to grasp that that her journey needed to be back in software engineering, her love of music was her raft and her miswanting was her obstacle. In short, she had misunderstood what exactly was her journey, her obstacle and her raft.

This sort of enlightened self-understanding is elusive. All of us, at some point, or perhaps too many points in our lives, think our journey needs to be something other than what it is. We think we want something only to find that in pursuing it or getting it, that is not what we wanted. We miswant. And what is miswanting? It is not liking what you wanted after you have obtained what you want. Frequently, we can’t accurately predict how we will feel after obtaining what we want. We can’t forecast our future affective states.

“Mad in pursuit and in possession so” wrote Shakespeare. Achievement of the goal causes frustration when we realize it was not what we imagined. This miswanting, sometimes driven be a strong desire or perhaps even by boredom, seems deeply ingrained in what makes us human, perhaps triggering all sorts of things like moving across the globe, seeking new discoveries, advancing our own friends, families, and careers with changes over time.

So what is an organization to do?

Managers of people, themselves experiencing bouts of miswanting, manage people doing the same. The approach to take is a deeply human one – recognize that figuring out what is your river, your raft and your journey is difficult enough and that wisely helping others do the same can be even more difficult. If teams of people recognize this in each other and the organization can positively versus negatively sanction the exploration that comes with miswanting, I think the organization is better for it.

I think this also goes beyond what we think a “learning organization” is. A learning organization embraces new ideas, experiments with new solutions. Along the way it productively folds that knowledge back into the organization. In managing the drifting intellectual pursuits of IT workers, managing miswanting is different and can result in knowledge walking out the door.

IT workers have one of the most dynamic and ever-changing careers. It can be very easy to miswant again and again. This is also a critical method by which IT workers learn and grow. It is often the sign of a curious and restless mind, not necessarily an emotional misfit. Managers should learn to discern the very normal and deeply human signs of miswanting one’s way to growth.

Some people, lucky or unlucky enough, have their journey fixed at a young age. Athletes who show signs of greatness early usually can wind up on a journey that can fix them for life, albeit with an early exit from the journey in mid-life where they sometimes experience the first pangs of miswanting. They then need to design for themselves not just a new raft, but a new journey.

But most of us wander about a bit as we figure out what is our journey. Organizations that recognize this and support it can improve people better and faster, developing lifelong relationships among people. These relationships can pay forwards over time and across multiple organizations. As managers and leaders try to answer the age-old question “What is our legacy?” they should consider the legacy they can foster in people by not just tolerating, but encouraging the growth that occurs through wandering and miswanting. Our expectations for the leadership development programs that are in use across the IT industry should be that while our organizations benefit from them, it is the people in these programs who benefit even more so. And that should be embraced.

In IT, nothing is permanent. We don’t build buildings. We build temporary and imaginary structures that live for a while inside electrified silicone chips. When the power goes out or the software gets replaced, what we build disappears just as waves over time make invisible the sandcastles on the shoreline. Our legacy lives more so in the people we have helped along the way. That’s probably as it should be anyway.