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




Easy, Effortless, And Hassle Free

Gladstone's, Malibu, California, USA

October 10, 2008

"Quick! Get on with it! Life is almost over!" ... 
I am indebted to my daughter Alexandra Lindsey Platt who inspired this conversation.



It's a possibility.

I'm inventing  the possibility of being easy, effortless, and hassle free.

I've started speaking it like a possibility. I've started speaking it, quite literally, by injecting the words "easy", "effortless", and "hassle free" intentionally, whenever possible, into my day to day conversations. The results are dramatic.

My daughter Alexandra recently moved in to her new residence in Santa Barbara. She's now a first year student on the University of California campus there. To be sure, we have a new life path  to negotiate now, she and I. The tenderness of separation, the erstwhile uncrossable line in the sand  drawn by the completion of the rites de passage  of her beginning her new life on her own, has morphed. Hers is now the sweet smell of success. Hers is now the triumph. Hers is the sheer excitement of being given a new bull  as a gift by life, and without hesitation, taking it by the horns. I'm so god-damned  proud of her. She's my hero! She's my cowgirl  who's crossed the line in the sand  (as Neil Young may have said).

Yet clearly there are also now new challenges to meet, new issues to resolve. Simply being excited  goes a long way toward providing fuel to move through all the new spaces, but it's not enough to resolve them entirely.

For starters, our time lines are now very different. Our schedules  don't match much anymore. In fact, without scheduling time to schedule  with each other, we wouldn't be able to schedule at all.

This is new. At times, things look difficult, even impossible. We speak by phone. Her priorities run her arguments. My priorities run mine. But mutual arrangements are rarely resolved based on who has the highest priority or who has the strongest argument. Mostly, mutual arrangements are resolved based on what works best for everyone.

At some point in the conversation, I'll surrender my point of view. I'll give up my position. I'll say to her "Whatever we choose, I'd like it to be easy, effortless, and hassle free for you.".

There's a sudden silence. All the effort, struggle, and difficulty  disappear. It's not that we've suddenly worked it all out  - we haven't (at least, not yet). It's not that divine intervention  has miraculously given us all the answers - it won't. It's that "easy, effortless, and hassle free" has made its appearance. It's entered decisively from stage right and is now front and center. front and center. "Easy, effortless, and hassle free" is now present in language like a possibility, and in the space of this possibility, things suddenly, magically  start falling into place. Solutions come up. Workability takes hold. Issues resolve themselves. Most magical of all, when new plans are hatched easily, when the logistics  get handled effortlessly, when arrangements are made without hassle, the space between us is freed up, and is opened for love, respect, and excitement.
Werner Erhard says "Nothing happens until someone says something.".

"Easy, effortless, and hassle free" happens simply because someone says it, simply because someone brings it forth out of nothing, for no reason, like a possibility.



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