I am indebted to Mark Kamin who inspired this conversation.
Werner Erhard being gravity announcing The Forum during a press
conference
at 765 California Street, San Francisco, California 94108, USA
Thursday December 13, 1984.
Werner
says "If you keep saying it the way it really is, eventually your
word
is
law in the universe.".
That doesn't imply if you simply say anything long enough,
eventually the universe will agree. Try
swimmingunderwater
without scuba equipment telling the universe you don't need air.
Laying down the law is a matter of saying it the way it is, the way it
really is. If you live
outside the law
you can't lay down the law. By living
outside the law
I mean living out of integrity.
Consider this: you don't have integrity, you've never had integrity,
you never will have integrity. You aren't born with integrity. You
can't claim integrity as your birthright. If you don't create
integrity, if you don't manufacture integrity out of nothing,
that is to say if your speaking doesn't lay down the law,
integrity doesn't show up for you by itself.
That's interesting to me. You can't lay down the law unless you have
integrity. But you don't have integrity. So to lay down the law, first
you have to make up integrity.
Isn't that wild? Law and making something up
at first seem as if they can't both be spoken in the same breath.
It's not interesting to me like some après diner
intellectual parlor chat over liqueurs and a nice cigar. Speaking as a
parent
of three teenage children I find the responsibility for laying down the
law, for being gravity in the matter, intriguing and challenging.
Glaringly absent from the package when each of my three children were
delivered was an instruction manual. What I know I bring with me into
parenthood is its biological reality. Beyond that, I have no
idea how to be a good
parent.
Children don't know
what's so.
Children only know what they want. They do anything to get
it. They pull your heartstrings. They unbashedly manipulate like master
fiddlers.
What I've figured out ... so far ... is my job as a
parent
is to be
gravity
for
my childrenno matter what. Then, not if but when they violate
the law, my job as a
parent
being gravity is to forgive them. A being has compassion and can
forgive. A mind, an
identity,
might not have and may not.