I am indebted to
Charlene Afremow
who inspired this conversation, and to Peter Fiekowsky and to
Robyn Symon
who contributed material.
Looking back, I notice how much time I've spent thinking about what
to do
next.
For the most part, it even looks like I've been pretty successful at it
- except now the rules for what I need to do
next
have changed dramatically. This is an entirely new phase for me. It's
what you may call a bittersweet phase. It bears a syndrome
known to people who've had
children,
as
"empty
nest". It's when your
children
are, for the first time, independently managing their own lives, their
own
finances,
and have left the home you built for them (hence the term
"empty
nest") and are living in their own places. It's bitter because it's the
end of a very precious time in life which will never come again. It's
sweet because it's a
victory,
having successfully accomplished something which is by no means
easy
to accomplish ... not to mention the start of a new
freedom.
The onset of this new phase radicalizes the way I've always thought
about what I need to do
next.
Until now, everything I've done has had supporting
my childrenfront and center
stage. Now that my two and a half decades of raising
children
are over (to be specific, it's the
financial
requirements which are over - outside of that, I'll never
stop supporting
my children),
the old rules of what I need to do, no longer apply. Another way of
saying "the old rules ... no longer apply" is
"the world
no longer occurs for me the way it used to". Now there's
no need to do anything ie there's no need to do anything at
all the way there were things which needed doing when I was
raising
children.
The
future's
wide
open.
And what surprises me is the delicious answer to the tantalizing
question "What are you going to do
nextLaurence?"
is "I don't know. I don't need to do anything.". It's
true.
I really don't know, and I really don't need
to do anything.
The world
occurs differently for me.
That said, as I
look from the question
"What are you going to do
next?"
(which is to say after months and months and maybe a year of
looking from the
question),
I realize something which at first seems unlikely, unbelievable,
incorrigible, even impossible. It's so not what I'm
expecting to see that I discount it at first. But then it comes up
again and again and again, outshining all other answers which come up
less and less and less, until I'm finally left with it, and I have to
confront it. What I realize is I've never known what to do
next
... yet something's always
happened,
so there's always been something I did
next,
something I couldn't ever have
imagined
in advance. What I did
next
was I responded to the way
the world
then occurred for me.
That's the
truth.
As for knowing what I'll be doing
next,
there's never been much of that anyway. What's galling about it is
realizing all the congested thought, all the furtive thinking I
invested in what I needed to do
next,
really didn't have much to do with what I actually did
next.
If the
truth
be told, it had
nothing
to do with it at all. I
laugh
wryly at myself when I consider how many megawatts of brain
power
I've wasted in this hopeless endeavor over the course of my lifetime
...
That may sound like there's no responsibility in it. Oddly enough,
sorry but there is. There's being responsible for that it
works
this way.
CreatingLaurence Platt and
Associates
was one of the biggest ventures I've ever undertaken - if not
the biggest. It's certainly the biggest business venture
I've
created.
Yet there wasn't once (not once ever) when I said to
myself "I'm going to
create
a very successful
computer training company
which will set me up as one of the most in demand
softwaretrainers
in these United States for an uninterrupted run of over twenty years.".
I never said that. Yet it just ...
happened.
It just unfolded by itself - organically if you will. One
thing led to another, which led to another ... and suddenly I was
delivering
world
class
software seminars
to many of the
Fortune
500 and Fortune 1000 companies
in all but eight of these fifty United States. Yet I never set out to
do any of it. I didn't know what I was going to do
next.
It just unfolded. It just
happened.
The world
occurred for me as
"children
have needs", and that's what I responded to. That's what I did
next.
Wow! What a relief it is to recognize (or to
re-recognize) it's all unfolding by itself anyway - no need to
figure it out. It's always turned out. It always will.
The world
keeps on turning out - just as it's been doing for millennia. Our true
(and possibly our only) jurisdiction (if you will) is to
invent new possibilities for being for ourselves and for our lives,
against the
background
of
the world
turning out the way it's always been turning out. How
awesome it is to get that thinking about / figuring out
what to do
nextisn't required - as human an activity as it may be, that
is to say as entrapping a human activity as it may be.
When I tell the
truth
about it, the best things that have ever
happened
for me are those that ... just ...
happened.
At best, all I did was respond to the way the
happeningworld
occurred for me.
But wait! Isn't that all of it? And haven't I always risen
to meet it? Rising to meet what occurs
(out-here
in
the world)
isn't the same as thinking about / figuring out what to do
next
(a
futile
exercise, if ever there was one, purely for the benefit of the
voice in my head).
Man! How counterintuitive is that? It's something I'm
constantly learning by unlearning. And the more I unlearn, the
free-er
I become. And the
free-er
I become, the more the
vast
fullness of what it is to be human, becomes available to me.
Postscript:
Without a
transformedview,
this essay may appear to skate on the thin ice of "Life
happens
..." equating to "... so I'll just sit around and wait for
something to
happen"
ie on doing
nothing
yet expecting results. It's far from that. Rather it's my
intention
to differentiate between the pointlessness of thinking about what to
do
next,
as distinct from responding to the way the
happeningworld
occurs.
Creating
a
context
is arguably the one thing that never just
happens
by itself. Our natural ability to
create
a
context
is our most
powerful
implement for interfering with the probable almost
certain
future
life was always heading uncontrollably toward. It's a distinction
which is developed further in this essay's sequel,
It's Both Not Either.
