Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard




A Future For Someone Else:

The Promise Of Enrollment

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

March 6, 2014



This essay, A Future For Someone Else: The Promise Of Enrollment, is the fifth in a group of twelve on Enrollment: I am indebted to Peter Fiekowsky who inspired this conversation, and to Charlene Afremow who contributed material.



Any one of us can create a future for ourselves which is reliable and worry-free to live into. I mean anyone. Not sure about what I'm referring to? Read on.

For the purposes of this conversation I'm not speaking about the specifics  ie about the steps, the machinations of making this happen. In this conversation I'm speaking about the possibility  of it happening. It's clear any one of us can create a future for ourselves which is reliable and worry-free to live into like a possibility, yes? You already know what you'd have to do to create such a future - or you could figure it out. You already know the steps you'd have to take to create such a future - or you could figure them out. You already know that whether or not you'll do what it takes to make this happen, it's possible.

That's one thing. But what about creating such a future for someone else?  What about creating a future for someone else which is reliable and worry-free for them  to live into? Is that possible? Can you do that? ... which is to ask "Is it within our realm of abilities to create a future for someone else which is reliable and worry-free for them to live into?". I assert it's possible. No, it's more than that actually. It's "creating a future for someone else" is one of those phrases you might find given by the dictionary for the exact definition of enrollment. And enrollment ie enroll-ing  is definitely within our realm of abilities.

Enrollment is causing a new possibility to be present for another so they're touched, moved, and inspired by that possibility (as Werner Erhard may have said). Creating a future for someone else which is reliable and worry-free for them to live into, is achieved by having an enrollment conversation  with them ie by having a conversation with them about creating a future for themselves which is reliable and worry-free to live into. Having enrollment conversations is also within our realm of abilities. They work like any enrollment conversation others had with us - even if we didn't call them enrollment conversations then.

So any one of us can create a future for ourselves which is reliable and worry-free to live into, like a possibility. And any one of us can create a future for someone else which is reliable and worry-free for them to live into like a possibility, by having an enrollment conversation with them. The latter especially is an example of the miracles which are rendered possible with communication. Not sure about my use of the particular word "miracle" here in this context of communication? Listen: creating a future for someone else which otherwise wasn't going to happen  anyway by itself, simply through having an enrollment conversation with them, is the epitome  of a miracle - of this, let's be clear. You  creating a future for someone else?  There's nothing as miraculous as this.

This assertion ("Creating a future for someone else which otherwise wasn't going to happen anyway by itself ... is the epitome of a miracle") may come as a stretch. But it's only a stretch until you consider the realm of this work ie the realm of transformation is the realm of the miraculous. I'd like to define this term ie I'd like to say what I mean by a "miracle" to make this plainer: a miracle is something that validates who you are rather than diminishes who you are (as Werner may have also said) - nothing else, nothing less, nothing more. When your enrollment conversation creates a future for someone else ie when you've created the possibility for someone else to fully realize who they really are, that's a miracle. In this realm there's almost nothing we can't accomplish.

Welcome to the realm of creating a future for someone else, the realm of enrollment, the realm of the de rigueur  miracle, the realm of the ordinary miracle.



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