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

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Boyne City, October 2024 III:

 The Child Is Farther*

Silver Street, Boyne City, Michigan, USA

October 15, 2024



"The Child is father of the Man." ... William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up (The Rainbow)

This essay, Boyne City, October 2024 III: The Child Is Farther, is the companion piece to You Can't Hold On To A Wriggling Puppy.

It is also the eleventh in an open group about my son Joshua Nelson Platt:
  1. Joshua Is Doing Nothing
  2. Two Human Beings One Heart
  3. You Can't Hold On To A Wriggling Puppy
  4. Joshua Nelson Mongezi  Platt
  5. Source Of Action
  6. The Magical Breakfast Burrito Assembly Line
  7. Return To The Creek
  8. The Magical Breakfast Burrito Assembly Line II
  9. Special Angel, Human Being
  10. Boyne City, October 2023 III: Blonde Boy
  11. Boyne City, October 2024 III: The Child Is Farther
in that order.

It is also the third in a trilogy written during a visit with my son Joshua Nelson Platt in Boyne City, October 2024: I am indebted to my son Joshua Nelson Platt who inspired this conversation.




Every time I visit him he's farther away, each time a longer distance. First he moved to a nearby town and I visited him there. Then he moved farther away to an entirely different part of the state and I visited him there. Then he moved even farther away to an entirely different state and I visited him there too.

It's arguably in being a parent myself that I realize how much my own parents loved me. Any distance between us, is too far. In his case, I'm in California and he's in Michigan. That's about nine hours total flying time on two non-direct flights within the continental United States. In the case of my parents, I'm in Napa Valley, California and they were in Cape Town, South Africa. You can't be farther apart physically than that on Planet Earth. The shortest way there is to drill down  until you emerge on the other side. Easy weekly road trips are out of range. At least in his case we can still meet up in about half a day.

It's a bag of mixed blessings, this role of being a parent. He's not only someone I love a lot. He's also someone I can hang out with. I respect him. I admire him. I like the way he lives his life - which is to say, I like the way he plays this game called Life. I like the way he thinks. I like the way he takes his health and his work seriously. I like the way he uses his iPhone to browse the internet to expand his knowledge. I admire the way he cooks and does his laundry.

Here's the thing: if you get your job done, your children will leave you. They'll be independent enough to take on Life on their own terms - wherever that may be. What's unavoidably bittersweet is in your doing what's best for them, you'll lose them - that is to say, in doing what's best for them, they'll become independent and move on, and you'll lose easy proximity to them. That's a rough dichotomy. And then again, now that I'm getting to know what that's like for me, I realize what it must have been like for my own parents. But baby birds must flit the nest. And flit they will. It's all in the grand scheme of things.

When we're in a conversation (about anything - any conversation really) I don't mind whether he agrees with me, or not. Really I don't. That he shares my opinions is unimportant to me. Really. That he agrees with my positions is unimportant to me. Honest. I'm not looking out for that. But what I am looking out for is that he learns to think for himself. If he offers his own point of view which is different than mine, I'll ask questions designed to have him expand his ideas and his opinions, rather than confront him by stating my differing opinions as a challenge to his. And always (in the end) I'll take time to ask him if he can differentiate between his opinions ... and who he really is. That's a little harder. Being my son carries no weight with that. It's not transmitted by a genetic code. Neither is it a legacy he'll inherit from me by default. It's something he'll have to figure out for himself - that is, if he does figure it out at all.

Indeed being my son probably does assure us that at least some of our opinions will match. But whether or not he gets who he really is (just because I say I do) is another order of business entirely. I have the space for him to get that, or not. And whether he does or he doesn't, either way I won't love him any less or any more because of it. Sometimes in our conversations, he's further from getting it. Sometimes he's closer to it. And one of the many things I love about him is that he's willing to inquire, to look, to discover for himself. In that way and others, we're a lot alike. The further he gets, the farther he goes.


* Further or farther?

further: figurative  distance (further research is needed)

farther: physical  distance (farther down the road)

Citation: wikidiff


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