Cowboy Cottage
Cattle Pasture, East Napa, California, USA
February 29, 2024
"Here's my
view:
there's nothing I want
people
to learn from me. It's what
you discover for yourself that makes it
powerful."
...
discussing compassion with
Dr James Doty
at Stanford University between presentations of the
Leadership Course
in Cancún, Mexico and the
Mastery Course
in New York
This essay,
A Discovery Worth Sharing,
is the companion piece to
The Storyless You.
I am indebted to Udi Ipalawatte who inspired this conversation.
The entry point for this conversation / distinction / discovery is to
inquire into what would be a direct challenge to the ubiquitous
"So-and-so is this way" or "So-and-so is that way.". We're prone,
especially with regard to what we mostly deem to be others' "negative"
traits, to say that so-and-so is this way, or that
so-and-so is that way, like it's an absolute
characteristic embedded in their DNA. We say "Bill is
arrogant", "Sheila is intolerant.". They are
that way.
Now look (and I really want you to get this): they aren't that way.
Really they aren't. We just say they are. When we start
taking a cold, hard,
unflinching
look at all the facts of the matter, what starts to come into
view
is that Bill isn't arrogant like it's an absolute characteristic
embedded in his DNA, but that he occurs
(shows up)
for me as arrogant. That's one step closer to owning how
Bill is (it's
straight
out of the
Conversations For Transformation
playbook: you get to own how others are). It's akin to
realizing I create Bill as arrogant (yes, I'm the one -
not Bill) which is but a short hop away from the colloquial "I make
up a story about Bill being arrogant.". Said another way, how
Bill occurs
(shows up)
for me is (you could say) just a story I make up about him.
We make up stories about
people.
But it's more than that actually. It's so much more. It's that we make
up stories about lots of things. Take
music.
We say "So-and-so's
music
is great" - like it's an absolute characteristic embedded in
the music.
No it's not. It occurs
(shows up)
for us as great, or not. And when it does, we all know it may not occur
(show up)
for everyone quite that way. We also make up stories about (for
example)
wine.
We say "So-and-so's
wine
is great: Robert Parker gave it 99 points out of 100!" like that's an
absolute characteristic embedded in
the wine.
No it's not. It occurs
(shows up)
for us as great, or not. And it may not occur
(show up)
for everyone that way. How it occurs
(shows up)
for us is (you could say) just a story we make up about it.
In the same way as we make up stories about
people,
music,
and
wine,
and then forget we made up the story and think they are
that way, we also make up stories about
art,
ignoring the fact (at first) that
art
occurs
(shows up)
however it uniquely occurs
(shows up)
for each one of us. There's no property in
any artwork
such that it occurs
(shows up)
for everyone the same way. How it occurs
(shows up)
for us is (you could say) just a story we make up about it.
From inquiring into all of the above, I've discovered something for
myself. It's a discovery worth
sharing.
Definition
discovery
noun
from the verb
discover
to find something for the first time, or something that had not been
known before, to realize or learn
<unquote>
We make up stories about
people.
We make up stories about
music.
We make up stories about
wine.
We make up stories about
art. And then we forget
we made up the stories and think they are that way. What
I've discovered (my discovery worth
sharing)
is: we make up stories about (wait for it) ... ev
... ry ... thing. We make up stories about the way
it's s'posed to be. We make up stories about what's fair
(and about what's not fair). We make up stories about what will happen
(and about what won't happen). We make up stories to justify what we
do. We make up stories to justify what we don't do. We
make up stories about everything. We call that life. And we
don't (or we forget to) un-collapse the stories we make up as life,
from
Life itself.
We don't differentiate.
This is a
graduate
conversation. It's almost
too much
to take in,
in one breath.
We don't really live life at all. We live stories we made up about
life which we've forgotten are just stories we made up up
about life. We think our stories about life are real. So watch: if we
don't really live life, and instead only live stories we make up about
life, wouldn't that in one fell swoop, account for all the
unworkability in our lives on
Earth,
yes? (I told you it was worth
sharing).
OK, is this
"The Truth"?
Oh, don't make it
"The Truth"!
That'll ruin it. It's certainly not
"The Truth"
because I said it. Rather look at it for yourself. See if you can
discover it for yourself. See if you can discover for yourself whether
or not you don't (or forget to) un-collapse the stories you make up as
life, from
Life itself.
If you can, it may have some
power,
some utility, some value. Who are you when you don't collapse the
stories you make up as life, with
Life itself?
