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
On Being Happy
San Francisco International Airport, California, USA
March 6, 2014
"Happiness is almost not worth talking about because the instant you
turn happiness into a goal, it isn't attainable any more. In other
words,
happiness isn't something you can work toward. It isn't something you
can put someplace and overcome barriers to get to. It is something
that happens in an instant. And the truth of the matter is that you
can alter your
state
of happiness by simply choosing to be willing to have it be
the way it is."
...
This essay,
On Being Happy,
is the companion piece to
On first take it sounds like an almost preposterous assertion. Actually
on first take it may sound not like an almost
preposterous assertion but rather like a completely
preposterous assertion. It's
Werner Erhard's
"You can alter your
state
of happiness by simply choosing to be willing to have it be
the way it is.".
Wow! Forget about being around the people who make you happy - and if
you're not happy because you're not around them as much as you'd like
to be around them, forget about being around them more. Forget about
doing the things which make you happy - and if you're not happy because
you're not doing them as much as you'd like to be doing them, forget
about doing them more. Forget about having the things which make you
happy - and if you're not happy because you don't have as much of them
as you'd like to have of them, forget about having more of them. It's
forget about them as the access to happiness (at best,
they compensate for not being happy). Rather it's choosing
to be willing to have it be
the way it is
which is the access to happiness.
Be careful. That doesn't disparage being around the people who make us
happy. It doesn't disparage doing the things which make us happy. It
doesn't disparage having the things which make us happy. Instead it
calls into question two pivotal aspects of happiness
attained (if you will) in those three ways.
The first is: when I'm not being around the people whom I
say make me happy, when I'm not doing the things which I
say make me happy, when I'm not having the things which I
say make me happy, do I have any access to being happy like a
possibility? The second is more pernicious: if being happy is
a function of being around the people who make me happy or of doing the
things which make me happy or of having the things which make me happy,
that's really a pretty damning statement about simply being happy,
isn't it? It argues that unless I'm being around, unless I'm
doing, unless I'm having, then at worst the possibility
of being happy doesn't exist, and at best it's in short supply.
It argues that happiness is something we're made or
attain rather than something we are or have
direct access to. And furthermore it argues if we aren't
made happy or don't attain happiness, we can't be happy.
The idea of bringing being happy to everyone and anything
and everything I'm being around or doing or having, is such a powerful
idea that it doesn't preclude being happy even when I'm not being
around and not doing and not having the things and people who make me
happy. That's powerful. It's happiness as a function of simply being,
not as a function of being around or of doing or of having. It's
powerful because it proposes happiness as an accessible way of being,
as a
sourced
experience to come from rather than as a function of
anything else ie rather than as a because of something
else.
What is this access to being happy as a function of simply being?
Consider
Werner's
"You can alter your
state
of happiness by simply choosing to be willing to have it be
the way it is.".
Try it on for size.
Listen:
you don't have to dislike or like
Werner
before trying it on for size. You don't have to disagree with or agree
with
Werner
before trying it on for size. You don't even have to disapprove of or
approve of
Werner
before trying it on for size. Honest! You don't.
If you try it on for size and you get something valuable from it for
yourself, if you get something powerful from it for yourself, if you
get something useful from it for yourself, then take it:
it's yours. And if you didn't get anything valuable or powerful or
useful from it for yourself, then discard it immediately.