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


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My Scripted Life

Wine Country Inn, St Helena, California, USA

May 14, 2021



"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles are  my life."
... Alfred D'Souza, Archbishop Emeritus of Agra (Taj Mahal diocese), Uttar Pradesh, India
This essay, My Scripted Life, is the companion piece to


Some time around now (it may have been closer to the last weekend of August in 1978 ... but nonetheless, some time around now)  I began taking my life and living seriously.

<aside>

I took that language burst "Some time around now (it may have been closer to the last weekend of August 1978 ... but nonetheless, some time around now)  ..." which appears throughout this Conversations For Transformation internet series of essays, from a similar expression by Werner.

When followed by the point being made (eg "... I began taking my life and living seriously"), it's a powerful way of pressing the button to transform any conversation.

<un-aside>

Now I don't mean seriously like significant or seriously like overly sober or seriously like dour and humorless. When I say I started taking my life and living seriously, I mean I realized the possibility of something bigger living my life, something more profound and moving than who I was being living my life when I lived it frivolously ie for the fun and for the laughs and for the distraction (all of which remain attractive to me, except no longer as primary goals).

When I began taking my life and living seriously, I saw something perplexing, something I didn't fully grasp was really happening - until in one of those peak experiences ie in one of those "A-Ha!"  moments, I realized it absolutely was really happening. What I saw is that my life actually lives itself. It has its own direction. It has its own impetus. It has its own momentum. So rather than me taking my life and living seriously having me direct my life in some seriously new way, I started listening for which way it wants to go, and then aligned myself with it going the way it wants to go.

At first I wondered whether going with my life the way it wants to go, might be just more-of-the-same trivial, laissez-faire  frivolous way of living my life as I had been living it until then. But on the second take, I saw it wasn't that. Life itself has managed to produce what it produces without being trivial or frivolous. I notice what Life itself has produced over millennia. It's neither trivial nor frivolous (that it's empty and meaningless, and it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and meaningless, is another conversation for another occasion). And so began my listening for the way my life wants to go, and then aligning myself with it going that way.

In the same way as my life lives itself, these essays write themselves. Just as my job is to align myself with the way my life is going, it's also to write these essays in the way they're going ie to write them in the way they want to be written. I listen for what it / they want to do. It's in sharp contrast to how it was for me prior to the last weekend of August in 1978 when ideas came, telling me what it / they wanted to do ... only I wasn't listening  then. I wasn't paying attention. I dismissed what I heard as chatter. Now I'm paying rapt attention, capturing these ideas as soon as they appear, taking them seriously, acting on them, and acting on them on time.

To act my life ie to be an actor playing the leading role in a play called "My Life", I have a script. I've scripted my life using ideas my life wants to live. Ideas for this script come anywhere at any time. I deploy three tools to capture them: a post-it  note pad and pencil suctioned to my car's dashboard for when I drive, paper and pen wrapped in a towel at the end of the lane for when I swim (some of my best ideas come when I swim). At all other times I text ideas to my email (in the cloud, ideas are more accessible as email). Later I transcribe the ideas from all capture tools into my Letts of London  diary. My diary is the script from which I act my life.

When I begin my day, I look at what's in my diary, at what time. That's what I do, and when I do it. If a slot is empty, it's free time, or open for something not yet considered. At the end of the day, I've done what there is to do, and I've not done what there isn't to do. And that's all I'll ever do. It's full. It's whole. It's complete.



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