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




Having Said Everything There Is To Say

Marin Headlands, California, USA

December 30, 2014



"When you've said all of the bad things and all of the good things you haven't been saying, you will find that what you've really been withholding is 'I love you.'." ... 
"Always be open to being related to everyone you have been related to." ...   speaking with Laurence Platt in Visits With A Friend VI II (Open To Everyone) 
This essay, Having Said Everything There Is To Say, is the companion piece to


It may be a while before we can determine whether newborns have a sense of completion or not. Given we develop language later in life, and especially given being complete is a linguistic act (like a declaration:  "I declare I'm complete with ..."), it may not be worth much to aver we're born with a sense of completion. It may not be worth much either to aver we're not  born with a sense of in-completion. The adult sense of in-completion will come later. Man! Will it ever  come later. Oh boy ...

For the most part, when I speak of an adult sense of incompletion which comes later, I'm referring to the sense of being incomplete with a specific person, and then being incomplete with another person, and then with another etc. One experience of being incomplete with one person, then another experience of being incomplete with another ... and pretty soon, life is seen through a fog  of being incomplete with people from the past, a fog which bends, molds, twists, and shapes like a series of filters  if you will, through which we view all interactions and relationships with all people from then on without being aware those filters are in place  (such is our epistemology)  - or even worse, without having access to a way of living without them.

After twenty eight years of bent, molded, twisted, shaped, and filtered relationships (that sounds worse than it was - but it's the truth, given the fog of incompletions), I took on Werner's challenge to compile a detailed and searching inventory of everyone I was incomplete with in any way. Also included in this list were people to whom I'd said things or done things which may have rendered them  incomplete with me. I began contacting every person on that list. There were over two hundred. To complicate things, by then I held green cards  from five different countries - meaning those relationships were with people spread far and wide around the planet.

If I had their contact information, I called them to request face to face meetings. Failing face to face meetings, we set up telephone conversations, or I wrote them saying what I needed to say to be complete (that is, with what I needed to say for both  of us to be complete). If I didn't have their contact information, I called people who might have their telephone numbers or mailing addresses. I then either called them (my telephone bill, especially the long distance  section, grew to be astronomical - those were the days prior to the advent of internet "penny a minute" international telephone calls) or wrote them requesting face to face meetings. Again, if face to face meetings proved to be unfeasible, we set up telephone conversations, or I wrote them.

It took almost a year to track down every single person on that list. I got complete with all of them - except fourteen. The fourteen were in three groups: those I located but who didn't respond, those I couldn't locate no matter what I attempted (by the time I started the process, a lot of water had flowed under a lot of bridges, and many people had moved too many times or too far away to track down), and those who I discovered were no longer alive. What proved interesting about those who didn't respond and those who weren't locatable and those who were no longer alive is that none of those situations were a stop to getting complete with them.

OK, so what do  you do to get complete with someone who doesn't respond or who isn't locatable ie who isn't there, or who's no longer alive? It's very simple: you speak with them. "Wait just a moment, Laurence: you speak  with someone who doesn't respond or who isn't there or who's no longer alive? How do you do  that?" - and well may you ask. First, you suspend any and all belief you may have about what it looks  like speaking with someone who doesn't respond or who isn't there or who's no longer alive ... and then you just speak with them. It's that simple. And if speaking with someone who isn't there doesn't come easy for you, you could ask a friend to role play  them for you. That works too, again regardless of what it may look like. The thing is this isn't about what it looks  like. It's about getting complete.

When you've said everything there is to say to the people you've been incomplete with, and to the people who, out of what you've said or done, have been left incomplete with you, the past-present  is taken care of - which is to say, the past-present is cleared. That much seems obvious. Yet it's really only of secondary import. What's not  so obvious ie what's really of primary import is when you clear the past-present living space ie when you clear the past-present beingsphere  overgrown with and choked by incompletions, you create an opening for uninhibited, free, spontaneous relationships, given that the incomplete past-present will always fog the future-present  by bending, molding, twisting, shaping, and filtering it.

Saying everything there is to say to the people you've been incomplete with, and to the people you've left incomplete, ensures the future-present is clear. It also introduces the sublime art of generating being already  complete like a possibility  for all new interactions and relationships.



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