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
Raise The Bar, Break The Barrier
Moore's Landing, Cuttings Wharf, Los Carneros Appellation, Napa
Valley, California, USA
March 25, 2009
"Living begins not when life starts, but when superlatives are
possible. Like 'simplest', 'truest',
'clearest' and more, a superlative ends with 'est'. Living,
on the other hand, begins with
est."
... Laurence Platt, August 1978
This essay,
Raise The Bar, Break The Barrier,
is the companion piece to
Where The Path Begins.
It is also the second in a quintology on
Barriers:
It's great exercise. It's low impact. It's intensely aerobic. It
works
for me in every way imaginable. It's more than simply my preferred
fitness regimen. I'd go as far as saying it's the perfect
way to stay fit. And it's not just a pleasant way to stay
fit either: it's also a pleasurable way to stay fit.
There's lots of skin sensations in
swimming.
Swimming
is a
metaphor for my life.
I love to
swim.
Literally. Not only that, but my daily pre-dawn
swim
sessions kick start my mornings especially those icy
winter ones, as well as allowing me precious quiet time
(when was the last occasion you were distracted by an incoming cell
phone call
underwater?)
to get straight about my priorities for the day ahead.
The benefits of
swimming
are cumulative, exponential. The more I
swim,
the greater the benefits. By "more" I don't mean "more
frequently". Through pragmatic work with my health coach, I've
realized exercising twice a day isn't necessarily more beneficial than
exercising once a day. So by "more" here, I mean "more
regularly" rather than "more frequently".
When I
swim
less regularly, the benefits cease accumulating. In fact it's worse
than that. When I
swim
less regularly, the erstwhile benefits of
swimming
regularly, degrade. And when they degrade, they degrade fast. So
I'm either maintaining a peak state of fitness or I'm not. I'm
either swimming regularly or I'm not.
I maintain a peak state of fitness, or I degrade ie I backslide.
There's nomiddle ground. With regard to maintaining a
peak state of fitness, there's no in between, there's no
standing still, there's no
resting on
laurels.
If you don't
swim
the butterfly stroke often, you're probably unaware of the
muscles between your shoulders, your "wing" muscles, which
strengthen the more they're used, the more they drive you through and
up, out of the water like a flying fish. Yet even though your wing
muscles strengthen and become defined through regular use, any strength
and definition gained is quickly lost if they're not used regularly.
Just like that, maintaining transformation requires a certain kind of
muscle, a muscle which degrades if it isn't used. Just as you
can experience a peak state of fitness and then allow it to degrade
through lack of practice, so can you experience transformation,
then allow it to degrade through lack of practice. Peak fitness is an
ongoingly practiced, created state. Just like that,
transformation too is an ongoingly practiced, created way
of living. With both, there's no standing still, no
resting on laurels
... up is the way to go, forward is the
direction in which the action moves.
So you raise the bar above you, and you break the barrier in front of
you simply because that's what there is to do ... that,
plus the fact that if you don't, your life is degrading ie you're
backsliding.