This essay,
Our Time Will Come Or Not,
is the sequel to
Triangle.
Werner
Erhard
quoting
Alan Watts
says
"This is it!"
- and a part of you or a great deal of you some of the time (if the
truth be told) doesn't believe it. This couldn't be
it, no? If this were it, then ... (supply your own
extensive list of what you think things would look like if this were
really it) ...
For the most part we are convinced this isn't it. That's
we like society, way more than we like merely
you and I. Living like this isn't it, isn't a matter of
geography (physical location) which changes if you go somewhere else.
It's a matter of ontology (being) and a matter of
epistemology
(already always knowing) which is so for you wherever you
are, whatever you're doing. Consider it's just possible
this is it.
That being so, here's an intriguing question to ask: if this
really is it, what would you do differently?
For starters, you may change your ideas about where the future
is. Here's what I mean by that:
This - living life - isn't a matter of getting to it or to
whatever you consider it to be - as in (most commonly held
in high ivory towers) "making it". This isn't a matter of
getting there ie getting to wherever it is.
And (in spite of our best intentions) it's never been a
matter of getting there. Neither, for that matter (if you want to take
this on, which may call on you to give up much of what you hold as
precious) is it a matter of being there.
Living life is and always has been a matter of climbing -
continuously, ongoingly, over and over and over again. And that's only
the half of it. The other half of it is this: the mountain you're
climbing continuously, ongoingly, over and over and over again is
continuously, ongoingly growing taller as you climb so
you'll climb continuously, ongoingly, over and over and over again and
you'll never reach the top.
That's why discounting
Alan's
"This is it!"
and looking instead to the future for a raison d'etre, is
hopeless at worst and
futile
at best. That for which you wait which, when it arrives, will prove
you've finally gotten it? It's ... not ...
coming. That for which you wait which, when it arrives, will
prove you've finally made it? It's ... not ... coming. He
for whom you wait who, when he arrives, will finally make this
it? Yes that's right: he's ...
not ... coming.
When we're living into an undeclared future, we say "Our time will
come". Listen: it may come and it may not.
Why?
Because an undeclared future is an unreliable future. I'd
like my time coming, to be an experience of fullness and intimacy. But
who says it's not full and intimate right
now? Who says "This isn't it"? Only you say so. Only I say
so.
I'm not waiting for our time to come. Our time will come or not. What
I'd rather do is have this time be our time - and clearly
this time has already come. I'm not waiting for the future
to evolve our relationship to fullness and intimacy. I'm stealing
fullness and intimacy from the future. I'm declaring it now.
I'm not looking to the future for fullness and intimacy. I'm living
from a future of fullness and intimacy.
To live from a future of fullness and intimacy requires a simple
declaration. That declaration is
"This is it!".
This being it, what there is to do (ie all there is to do)
is live fully and intimately now. As a declaration, fullness and
intimacy are
presentnow. So, going back to my initial question, what there is to do
differently if
this is it
is declare the fullness and the intimacy of the future realized, now.
That, and keep on declaring it continuously, ongoingly, over and over
and over again while you climb.