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've Seen The Future And The Future Is You

Rutherford Grove, Rutherford, California, USA

December 8, 2014


This essay, I've Seen The Future And The Future Is You, is the prequel to The Sound Of Your Voice.

It is also the fifth in an open group Conversations With A Friend Prequels:

What stops me living a life I love isn't the past I had, but rather the future I don't  have. So what makes for living a life I love, is inventing a future worth living into.

This seminal idea that what keeps me stuck isn't what happened in the past but rather that I haven't invented anything worthwhile for the future, is vintage Erhard. It flies in the face of so many of our most cherished belief systems, especially those rooted in psychology and even in religion which seek to define us and explain us by what happened in the past. We're convinced  something happened way back when, the result of which is we turned out to be the way we turned out. Our behavior, in particular our successes, can therefore always be defined and explained and (or so we aver) predicted, based on what happened back then. But mostly it's our failures, it's where we're hung up, which we define, explain, and predict ie which we analyze  in terms of the past.

In this way, we have it that it's the past and what happened in the past which is to blame for how we are today. And if that's not bad enough, what's worse is the past, being the past, is set in stone  ie it indisputably happened, leaving us with little we can ever do to be completely free of it.

<aside>

It's true the past indisputably happened. In this way, the past is  set in stone, leaving us with little we can ever do to be completely free of it. What's not  set in stone are our assessments, judgements, and opinions about what happened in the past. They're more malleable. Letting alone what happened in the past ie leaving the past in the past, and instead taking responsibility for authoring the assessments, judgements, and opinions we hold about what happened in the past, is the way the past and what happened in the past, is recontextualized  (I love  that word).

Recontextualizing the past and what happened in the past, is arguably the  (if not the  then an)  essential bastion of transformation ... and that's a subject for another conversation on another occasion.

<un-aside>

One way through the predicament of being left with little you can ever do to be completely free of your past, is to leave your past in the past. You actually don't have much choice: if you don't leave your past in the past, it's going to occupy your future and run you (living with your past occupying your future, is what it is to be run by the past, yes?). If I leave my past in the past, my future is wide open and empty, becoming instead a place into which I can create and choose to live a life I love.

You sharing this idea with me, as well as sharing it with so many countless others, is a huge, vast, enormous  gift not merely to us fortunate enough to be well within earshot, but a breakthrough for humanity in its entirety as well. And the appropriate thing for me to say when someone gives me a gift, is "Thank you.". But "Thank you", when it's my response to a gift of this magnitude, is so pitifully weak, so woefully inadequate that I may as well not say anything at all. Yet "Thank you" is what all good people say upon receipt of a gift. So I say it anyway, while fully realizing it can never totally express all the gratitude there is to express for your massive gift of nothing less than freedom from the past ie of nothing short of victory over the past ie of nothing but a triumph over the past: "Thank ... you! Really. And: Love.".

It's this triumph which emboldened my request to schedule an occasion with you so we can catch up and speak about not only this gift but also whatever else there is to speak about. What the latter looks like, I don't yet know - but this I assure you: I'll come up with a worthwhile agenda. Both your time and mine will be well spent.

With regard to you accepting my request, what can I say ie what else  can I say but "(exhale) Yes  ...", and (almost as an afterthought) "Of course", and (yet again) "Thank you" which as I said, coming from me in recognition of this sort of thing, is almost completely inadequate to convey all there is to convey. "Yes. Of course. Thank you.". That's it. I promise I'll be back in touch closer to the time to continue setting this up. In the meantime I've got my work cut out for me writing a list.

One of the items on my already forming list ie one of the many  items on my already forming list, is this: "Everyone loves you, everyone sends their love.". It's in lieu of the plethora of communications your friends ask me to convey to you. I'd like to recreate each and every single greeting individually and exactly - truly I would. But if I did, it's all we'd be doing for weeks and weeks on end, and nothing else could get done. That said, this way works, and it works very, very well: we'll start off our meeting at "Everyone loves you, everyone sends their love". It'll be the first item on the agenda. Let's face it: there aren't too many meetings which start off like that.

This project is shaping up to become the perfect model of inventing a future worth living into, the perfect access to ongoingly living a life I love: I'm putting who you are into my future and then I'm living into that future. It's a future worth living into. It's a life I love. It's also worthwhile, fulfilling, satisfying, creative, not to mention (when I come to think of it) totally remarkable: who woulda thunk  something like this could ever happen? It makes total sense now. But going back in time? It wasn't on the radar, and it wasn't going to be. Who would have ever dreamed something like this was aligned in the stars (and on the cards at the same time) for Laurence?

Not me. Definitely  not me. But now that it's real, now that it's really happening, I experience it both as a personal gift and as a privilege. And the thing I want you to know is when I experience it as a personal gift and as a privilege, I can tell it's mine and  it's ours. The only way this gift and this privilege will ever have any value is if they're shared. The only way this opportunity will ever have any lasting, enduring value for me, is if I give it away. I don't know why it works like this - it's been thirty six years and I never figured that out (I don't try to any more). But I've been around you long enough to know that sharing who you are is the way this works best.

So stay tuned.


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