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




Our Time Will Come Or Not

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

April 16, 2013

"This is it!"  ... Alan Watts quoted by  
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 present now. 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.



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