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
I Love You Revisited
Marin County, California, USA
October 28, 2009
"Yes - you are OK with me exactly the way you are and the way you are
not. And I respect your commitment to making a difference for others,
and that makes it easy for me to communicate with you, and having
respect for you and being able to communicate with you raises my
affinity (love) for you."
I watched a movie recently. A couple get married. The best man toasts
the groom and the bride at the reception. Holding a glass of champagne
high, he says how fortunate the groom is to have the bride for his
wife. He says "She completes him.".
Actually it isn't necessary to watch a movie to get this particular
sentiment, this particular way of regarding love and marriage. It, or
something similar to it, is often spoken at weddings. It's a well
intentioned compliment, a comment intended to pay respect to the new
couple and to acknowledge why they've taken this step to be together in
marriage. "She completes him" - they
complete each other.
It's an unexpectedly provocative, attention grabbing scene for me.
All directors want their movies to grab attention. This one does,
although I doubt the director really intends to grab my attention, as
he does in this way, simply with the comment "She
completes him.". Saying to myself "Wait a
minute ...", I pause the movie to
reflect.
By providing a perfect counterfoil, "She completes him"
points exactly to where my own ideas of love have transformed.
Implied in the statement "She completes him" is the tacit
assumption he's incomplete without her. Implied in "She
completes him" is the assumption by himself
he's incomplete. The implication is by himself, he requires the love
and presence of another in order to be complete. And what does
one incomplete person say to another person who
"completes" him (as our best man may have said)? Why, "Iloveyou" of course, a situation which we then
ominously refer to as "falling" in love.
What, I ask myself, does love look like when each person in a
relationship is already complete? ie when each person
comes into a relationship already complete? What does love
look like when completion is brought to a relationship,
rather than when a relationship is regarded as an oasis, a candy
store of completion for each incomplete person
in it?
What happens, for example, if a relationship is built on a mutual
understanding ie on a foundation of a couple completing each
other, then one or both of them becomes complete by
themselves ie independent of the other? What happens to the
foundation on which the relationship is built? What happens to the
relationship which stands on the now defunct foundation?
I don't know. I don't have answers. This conversation is simply a place
to stand and look. But I'll wager you a tall, cold one that something
will shift in relationships like these, something as destabilizing as
standing up in a canoe in mid-stream. They'll fall out of
this destabilized canoe just as surely as they'll fall out
of love. It's poignant. Relationships like these carry the seeds of
their own destruction embedded in the very attractions which get them
started in the first place. Ironically it's what the couple hope to get
out of the relationship in the first place which ends up becoming the
critical component of its demise.
In contradistinction, I postulate relationships predicated on a
foundation of people already complete not only rewrite the
paradigm for relationship, but they also tease out an
entirely new possibility for love itself. Fundamentally, there's only
one distinction newly present in such situations, yet this one
distinction is powerful enough to shift everything we once
supposed was true about love and relationship. It's this:
When I'm complete, my relationships become spaces into
which I can express and share my
completion. They're no longer places where I go to get
complete. In other words, the other person is completely off the
hook when it comes to my completion and my satisfaction in
the relationship. The other person no longer bears the onus of my
completion and my satisfaction and is, in turn, free or
free-er to generate and manage their own completion and
satisfaction.
In a conversation like this, pragmatism dictates we tell the truth
about the
elusiveness of
completion.
Completion ie
being complete comes and goes. Now you see it, now you
don't. Just when you think you got it, you realize you don't
got it. Then just when you think you've lost it forever, you
realize you got it again. Here's how you manage the
elusiveness of
completion
in this new paradigm for relationship:
When you're complete, be complete. When you think you're not complete,
be a stand for the possibility of being complete. Being
complete is your word that you're complete. Being a stand
for the possibility of being complete is your word that
you're complete. You have the choice to always be complete
as a matter of your word.
Playing at this level, the entire paradigm of love is rewritten. I love
you because I love you. It's not because of anything you do,
although I may admire many of the things you do. It's not because of
the qualities you have, although I may respect the way you conduct
yourself in the world. It's not because of something you say nor
because of the way you speak, although I may feel very much at
home in your conversation. It's none of the above.
How interesting it's come to this! It used to be if I tell you "I love
you", you might ask me "Why do you love me?", and I would
have to come up with reasons for loving you. If I tell you
"I love you because I love you", you might think I'm being
evasive. But it's the truth. I do. I love you because I love
you.
In the old paradigm of love, there has to be a reason for
being in love. If you can't give a reason for, that is to say if you
can't justify your being in love, that's proof
positive you aren't in love. If you look at this closely,
you'll see there's no responsibility when love is assigned
to a reason. And that which carries all the responsibility, "I
love you because I love you", is dismissed as without base,
without foundation.
There's no proof required in, no reason for "I love you because I
love you.". And just to be certain the emphasis is in the right
place, "I love you because I love you" is really "I love
you because I love you because I say you are OK with me
exactly the way you are and the way you are not.". It's not dependent
on so-called falling in love, and it's free from the
automaticity of falling out of love. Love based on "I love
you because I love you because I say you are OK with me
exactly the way you are and the way you are not" has the possibility of
transcending circumstance, change, and time.
Once upon a time "I love you", coming from being incomplete,
meant you complete me. And thereby, as it's often said in
fairy stories, hangs a tale. "I love you", coming from being
incomplete, sows the seeds of it's own destruction by not being
responsible for being complete. Now "I love you" revisited, coming from
being complete, acknowledges I'm complete and I grant you being
complete. It grants you being the way you are and the way you aren't.
It acknowledges you're complete and you grant me being complete.
People and things are the way they are and the way they are not. That's
obviously
what's so.
Stop pretending it's otherwise. "I love you" revisited acknowledges you
are the way you are and the way you are not.
In other words, "I love you" revisited is simply
what's so.
