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




Match For Life

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

July 3, 2014



This essay, Match For Life, is the companion piece to Cause In The Matter II: Congruent With Life



Consider this possibility: the possibility of living congruent with life like a stand, like your word in the matter. Transformation gives the possibility of living congruent with life - that is to say transformation gives the possibility of being a match for life.




Incongruent

Congruent*
Similar Shapes


Consider being congruent with life as your natural Self-expression. Consider being a match for life as your natural Self-expression. Consider being a match for life is  your natural Self-expression. Consider living anything less than that, is just ripping yourself off. Consider living anything less than being a match for life, is simply biding time, going through the motions - in other words, it's living like business as usual.

These Conversations For Transformation, this Conversation For Transformation in particular, in fact any  conversation for transformation if they're going to succeed in sharing transformation and making it available in its authentic context (which is to say if they're going to succeed in making it available in language), must be a match for life (which is to say they must be committed  to being a match for life) just as the full Self-expression of any transformed life is a match for life.

The essential idea here is being a match for life requires an active  participation with life rather than a passive  participation with life. Being a match for life is bringing yourself to life, rather than waiting for life to come to you ie rather than waiting for life to happen  to you. To borrow from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy: ask not when life will happen to you; ask with what you'll match life.

That said, is it possible to measure whether or not an individual lives matching life? Indeed it is. A veritable plethora  of measurements can be put in place to gauge this - such as measuring promises made and promises kept, to name but two. Notice in measuring living as a match for life, any such measurements have to start somewhere. Like measuring the date starts with GMT  ie Greenwich Mean Time, where does measuring living as a match for life, start?

The place from where your life is measured as a match for life, starts with what you say ie it starts from where you stand. Without measurements, I can only offer my opinion, interpretation, or assessment of whether or not you live your life as a match for life. As accurate as my opinion, interpretation, and assessment may be, they're not measurements.

Similarly, the place from where my life is measured as a match for life, starts with what I say ie it starts from where I stand. Without measurements, you can only offer your opinion, interpretation, or assessment of whether or not I live my life as a match for life. As accurate as your opinion, interpretation, and assessment may be, they're not measurements.

It's only from what I say ie from where I stand that you can tell whether or not I live my life as a match for life, and how you can measure the degree to which I'm succeeding at it, or not. It's only from what I say ie from where I stand that you can tell whether living my life as a match for life, is my commitment. Without my word in the matter, living my life as a match for life isn't possible - neither as my commitment nor as something you can measure.


* From the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>

Definition
congruent


adjective
describes a shape in mathematics that has the same shape and size as another

<unquote>


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