"Life is a game.
In order to have a game, something has to be
more important
than something else.
If what already is, is
more important
than what isn't, the game is over.
So life is a game in which what isn't is
more important
than what is.
Let the good times roll."
...
"The truth believed is a lie."
...
"What I have is a place to stand. Not the right place, for I do not
pretend to know what is right even for myself, let alone others, but a
place I am willing to try out to see if it leaves me as a clearing
where the truth can more powerfully go to work."
...
fleshing out his "I am committed to being a space where the
truth can go to work" answer to Laurence Platt's question "Who are
you like a possibility, like a commitment?" in
Questions For A Friend III
"The tree leaves, the ocean waves,
the universe
peoples."
...
Alan W ("Wilson") Watts,
deploying plural nouns "leaves", "waves", and "peoples" as
third-person verbs
This essay,
Bookends II: Times I'm Not,
is the one thousand seven hundred and fiftieth in this
Conversations For Transformation
internet series.
Before I was born, I wasn't. Then I was born, and I was. And I fully
expect to
die
(ie to not be) some time in the next twenty or thirty years or so (to
be sure, nobody will be more surprised than me if I don't) and then I
won't be. Again. Like that, the times I'm not, are the bookends
of my life. In other words, my life is the time I am, book-ended by the
times I'm not (or so it seems). The times I'm not, are: 1) the time I
wasn't, and 2) the time I'll not be (again).
It's in
inquiring
into /
telling the truth
about these bookends of my life ie it's in
inquiring
into the times I'm not, that I'll gain the greatest sense of who I am -
or at least the greatest sense of who I might be. I say "might be"
prudently because (I really want you to get this)
"The truth believed is a
lie.".
Really it is.
Look: it's noble to
tell the truth.
But what's even
more important
than noble, is it's pragmatic to
tell the truth.
"Pragmatic" means it just plain works. And when it comes to
telling the truth
pragmatically and
unflinchingly
about whether something is true or not, I assert there are not two but
three options. The first option is something's true. The second option
is it's not true ie it's false. And the third option? The third option
is the often denigrated "I don't know.".
Now I myself am quite comfortable with "I don't know.". I don't
have to know, when I don't know. When we have to know when
we don't know, we veer off into constructing
belief systems
to fill the uncertainty of "I don't know.".
Consider
that we truly miss the entire possibility of who we are, when we fill
the uncertainty of "I don't know" with
a belief system.
When we don't know, instead of being with "I don't know", we veer off
into constructing
a belief system
that assuages the disconcerting nature of "I don't know.". What that
does is kill off our
access
to possibility
(belief systems,
set in stone, kill off possibility).
As I contemplate the bookends of my life ie as I
inquire
into what it was like when I wasn't, and then
inquire
into what it will be like when I'm not (again), I'm perfectly OK with
it if all I can authentically come up with is "I don't know". I'm not
driven to come up with an irrefutable answer or answers (at best) and /
or an explanation or explanations (at least) and / or
a belief system
to provide a semblance of certainty (at worst). Both bookends of my
life invite me to hang out with "I don't know" from time to time (to be
sure, both bookends of my life are times I'm not, and when I'm not, how
can I possibly know?).
But an even
bigger,
even more useful and more pragmatic
inquiry
for me isn't into what it was like when I wasn't, or what it'll be like
when I'm not (again). Rather, it's "Who am I now that's
book-ended by the times I'm not?". Asked from a slightly different
angle, the
bigger,
more useful
inquiry
for me is "What is it that's book-ended by the times I'm
not, that gives my life ie that gives who I am?" (asked this way, it's
the times I'm not that give
access
to who I am).
Without requiring
a belief system,
what
this inquiry
reveals is the space, the
context
in which
the world
and the events of my life including my experience,
show up.
That's what came into being when I was born / stops being when I
die.
It's what's bookended by the times I'm not. That's my
unflinching
answer. But is it the truth? I don't know. And I'm OK with
that. I'm OK with "I don't know.". From "I don't know" I can
invent
a host of possibilities for
this inquiry.