I am indebted to Mark Spirtos who inspired this conversation.
Werner
is
a guy
you have to
be around
to appreciate fully. You'll learn about him from
the people
who know him.
You'll hear about him from the legions of
people
who
participate
in
his work.
You may read about him and
listen
to audio of him speaking. But until you've actually
been around him,
you won't really get how he be's, that je ne sais
quoi he brings to each interaction with everyone in his life
and to
Life itself.
That quality attracts
people.
To get it they'll do almost anything: read the books and study the
materials he read and studied, dress like him, style their hair like
him, sip miso soup from the same thermos mug as him, anything and
everything to be like him. Yet none of it is "being like
Werner".
It may be "looking like
Werner".
But it's not "being like
Werner".
A colleague of mine has had a remarkable career path. From world
amateur
surfing
champion, to
leader
of and
source
of
Werner's work.
There are literally hundreds and hundreds of
people
worldwide who are trained and certified to
leadWerner's work.
But only a few of them are candidated to
sourceWerner's work
(ie to fine tune old programs and to bring forth new ones). He's really
remarkable in that way. And what makes him even more remarkable is that
it's he who trained himself to
sourceWerner's work.
And it's because he's trained himself to
sourceWerner's work,
that
people
will say "He's just like
Werner!".
That's actually a valid comparison:
WernersourcesWerner's work,
and he
sourcesWerner's work,
therefore (we would infer) he's just like
Werner.
You can't dispute that. But as I looked at it longer and deeper, I
began to see something more than just his
Self-trained
ability to
sourceWerner's work
that's really at
the heart of
what makes him like
Werner,
something which brings into sharp focus the question "What does 'being
like
Werner'
mean? What is it exactly?".
It's quite literal really. In the phrase "being like
Werner",
"being" is not so much an
observation
of a comparison, as it's a verb. It's something he does.
And arguably, whenever he does whatever he does,
people
say he's like
Werner
- the comparison. But what is it that he does exactly that
has him be compared to
Werner?
I stayed with this question for weeks, years maybe. And then I finally
figured it out (when it just hit me): he's like
Wernerbecause he be's who he really is. He is like
Wernerbecause he is like himself. I slowly let in my delayed delight,
smiling at the delicious
paradox
in the inference which resulted, slowly nodding my head, savoring it:
if you are being like
Werner,
you're not being like
Werner;
if you're being like yourself, then you're being like
Werner.
So: what does "being like
Werner"
mean? What exactly? And here's what I got: you are being like
Werner
when you're being the way
Werner
be's. And the way
Werner
be's is he be's himself.
People
who are being like
Werner
are being like themselves. I really want you to get this: when you're
being like
Werner
you're not being like
Werner
(paradoxical
as it sounds). When you're being like yourself ie when you're being who
you really are, you're being like
Werner.
During one of
my visits with Werner,
we talked about this. I said "He's one of those rare
program leaders
who doesn't merely recreate the current material. He can be counted on
to
source
new material. And yet he's not like you,
Werner"
I said, "It's not the
sourcing
new material that makes him like you. What makes him like you is he's
like himself. And that's what makes him like you.". After
a pause
Werner
replied "You're the second person only, to notice that.".