At first it sounds sentimental. Upon
closer
scrutiny, it turns out it's profound.
When you
say
it to someone for whom you have
romanticpuppy
lovefeelings,
someone whom you see
(poetically)
as a ray of hope in an otherwise cloudy
world,
someone in whose
presence
your life is
worth
living (against your misguided
background
premise that your life isn't
worth
living if you're by yourself), it's sentimental - not to mention
naïve; it also distracts actually, from what it really takes to
have your life
work.
Yet on the occasions I've
listened
it
spoken
directly at me, confronting and
straight,
outside of any and all
romantic
connotations, it
speaks
to me ie it reminds me of the inherent
power
I have to
transformmy own life,
and it's profound.
It's "Only you.".
As the very, very best of
Doo-Wop,
it's sentimental. And it's also, as a
laser-tenet
of
transformation,
profound.
A
friend
of mine (not a
Doo-Wop
aficionado) invested five years in
therapy:
one hour twice a week, $50.00 an hour. And after it was over, I could
tell he had certainly
gotten
something profound: his life
worked.
"It took me five long years to
get
this, thanks to a great
therapist"
he told me when we
talked
about it. I countered (with compassion) that I wasn't convinced - not
with regard to what he had (the new
workability
in his life was
clear)
but rather with regard to the
catalyst
for him
getting
what he
got.
"What if" I
asked
him "you invested all those five years in
getting it
with a great
therapist,
and what that eventually
led
you to realize was you had to
get it
by yourself? That's what took you five years to
get.
So you ended the
therapy
and later, in a
moment
all by yourself, only you, you
got it.
Now
I'm
asking:
could it be it didn't take you five years? Could it be it took you but
a
moment?
and that you merely put off / avoided
getting
what you
got
in that
moment,
for five years?".
Listen:
is that
"the truth"
about how he
got
what he
got?
Maybe so. And maybe not. But stating it as if it's
"the truth"?
That's arrogant - not to mention insulting to your intelligence. What
it does (which I assert is useful) is it poses a "What if ...?"
scenario: what if only you can
transform
your life? In
the world of
transformation,
it's a given ie it's axiomatic that you're imbued with the
power
to
transform
your life - and that it's an inalienablepower.
But it's also a well-known
paradox:
in order to
get
that only you can
transform
your life ie in order to
get
that you already have the inalienable
power
to
transform
your life, you first have to
transform
your life.
In this
conversation,
when I allude to only you having the inalienable
power
to
transform
your life, I'm not alluding to who you colloquially take yourself to
be. I'm alluding to
who you really are.
Differentiating between the two is (you could
say)
the
work of transformation.