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
And More
Checklists
Viansa, Sonoma Valley, California, USA
October 3, 2019
"If you could really accept that you weren't OK, you could stop
proving you were OK. If you could stop proving that you were OK, you
could get that it was OK not to be OK. If you could get that it was OK
not to be OK, you could get that you were OK the way you are. You're
OK, get it?"
...
There's something oddly endemic to what it is to be a human being. And
really, it is truly odd. It's our insistence that (no,
it's our certainty that) we're not OK, that
something's wrong.
In the pantheon of life forms, we're peerless in this regard. It's more
than that actually. It's we're unique in this regard. There's no other
life form whose credo for being in the world, comes even close to our
"I'm not OK.". Yes that's really odd, given even the most cursory
examination ("... so
the universe
set us up to be not OK? Really???"). Like a
psychological assessment, like a cultural assumption, like a
religious
belief, we are that we're not OK. With us it's simply a
fact.
Even more than that, what's truly odd-er is that it's only
we, who say we aren't OK in the first place (like it's a done
deal) and then we spend the rest of our lives compensating
for not being OK, and / or in pursuit of that which will make us OK,
like we're fixing the psychological assessment, like we're voting
against the cultural assumption, like we're getting saved from the
religious
belief. Somehow and somewhere along the way, we concluded (albeit
falsely) we're not OK, and that our time in life is to be spent
(indeed, our life is intended for) making ourselves OK. We
know that's its purpose, its mission. So we pursue it
vigorously. Oh, and if we don't manage to make ourselves OK this
lifetime, no problem: we'll get it right in the next one
or the ones after it (yes that's the lunatic extent of this particular
premise).
How utterly odd is that! How utterly human is that!! How utterly human
is it to live with the blind certainty that we're not OK!!! Look: even
a dog
doesn't live like it's not OK. Neither do
birds
nor trees live that way, nor do the lilies of the field live that way
(as
Jesus Christ
may have said). Only human beings live in the faux certainty that the
way we are, is not OK ie that there's
something wrong
with the way we are, so that there's something else we
need to do and / or accomplish and / or reach in order to become OK. In
this regard, we keep lists of a multitude of aspects of our lives, on
which we check off (or check) items in order to measure our OK-ness.
It may be useful to pause for a moment and consider what these
checklists are, not in order to maximize their impact nor in order to
make them more efficient, but rather to recognize them for what they
are, and to see the inherent folly in maintaining them at all. Then,
once we've examined them, they can be discarded entirely, given there's
no use obsessing over them ongoingly (why maintain checklists to
measure whether we've finally become OK when we were already OK to
begin with?).
One such checklist is the "looking good" checklist. If only I could
look good, I'll be OK. How's my hair? Are my clothes chic and
fashionable? Is my makeup right? Does it hide the blemishes? Another
such checklist is the
"lovable"
checklist. If only I could be
lovable,
I'll be OK. Do people
love
me? What do they think of me? Do they approve of me? Do they admire me?
Am I respected? Another such checklist is the "bank balance" checklist.
If I had enough money, I would be OK (and its partner: do I currently
have enough money to be OK?). I can measure if I'm OK by what I can
afford. The more I can afford, the OK-er I will be (be particularly
wary of that one: it flies in the face of enormously wealthy folks we
all know, for whom OK-ness is clearly a fleeting and rare commodity).
There are many more such checklists. We all know what they are. They
each track distinct areas of our lives, and are therefore all
different. Yet what they all have in common is their basic premise:
not OK, do this and / or accomplish this and / or reach
this ... then be OK. Tell the truth: it's a flawed
premise, yes? You're already OK. You always were OK to begin with.
You're OK now (the way you are, and the way you aren't). So be OK.
Throw out all the checklists. Cut out all the middle men.