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

Tempered Tornado

Silverado Trail, Napa Valley, California, USA

July 29, 2010

This essay, Tempered Tornado, is the sequel to the sixth trilogy Visits With A Friend:

in that order.

It is also the second in an open group Visits With A Friend Sequels:

in that order.

It is also the companion piece to New Era: An Invitation.

I am indebted to Palmer Kelly who inspired this conversation.

The perfect writing is when I disappear after I've written it, leaving people with their experience of you.

It's an awesome experience, moving to observe, this experiencing people experiencing who they really are. In this regard, some things work and others don't. Beyond the conversation, beyond the introduction to the possibility, what works is exemplifying it. If you're really being who you really are, it shows. It leaves a trail. There are clues. There are tell tale signs. There's enthusiasm, responsibility, alacrity, listening, and breakthroughs as normalcy. And then there's also velocity.

With particular regard to the tell tale sign of velocity, you've taken out all the stops. You're pedal to the metal. You've breached all the barriers. On your speedometer, "full steam ahead" is the slowest setting there is. Indeed it may even be the only setting there is. It's inspiring. Anyone observing the pace at which you work knows they'd be exhausted working at half your velocity. Until it's seen to be believed, working at your velocity isn't even possible. And once gotten, even if the thought of working at your velocity is exhausting, being exhausted in this context is inspiring.

<aside>

That's powerful: the mere thought of working at your velocity, while exhausting, is inspiring ...

<un-aside>

Whereas others talk about retiring, you're investing every available second in making a difference. You've gotten the next few decades of your life laid out in fifteen minute increments, most of which are already scheduled and accounted for. You're also flexible enough to turn on a dime and go in a totally new direction when it's called for.

You've organized yourself with every possible encumbrance, barrier, and hindrance to your creativity out of the way. Your entire life demonstrates full on creativity requires no down time. It's this demonstration alone for which there's really no counter-argument. It's this demonstration alone which most often comes clear out of left field as a sudden jarring reminder just when I've begun to buy into my limiting, constraining beliefs about what's possible for performance.

Where you lay new track is wherever you are whenever you're being creative, which is 24 / 7 / 365 (perhaps that should be "25 / 8 / 366"). Creativity surges from you sweep aside all the trivia, all the business as usual, all the yesterday's news in it's path, leaving in its wake alignment, clarity, new openings, new possibilities, new opportunities, and powerful new thoughts which haven't been thought before.

But it's not a wild tornado, this unbridled creativity of yours. It's no runaway out of control egotistical indulgence, this vortex of Self expression which renders me stunned as it inexorably reminds me of my own creativity which I've neglected and steadily tamped down over the course of my life to the point where I sometimes forget I have it at all. No, this tornado is tempered, elegantly managed, carefully applied and meticulously monitored for the benefit of anyone and everyone who has the good fortune to come across it.

From the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>

Definition
tempered

adjective
from the verb temper (METAL)
to heat then cool a metal in order to make it hard

<unquote>

Also from the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>

Definition
tempered

adjective
from the verb temper (REDUCE)
to make something less strong, extreme, etc

<unquote>

There's a rich analogy I could get into with "to heat then cool a metal in order to make it hard" which is what it is to temper metal, the point of which would be this: tempering metal is managing it to transform it. Tempering a tornado, the life force, is managing it to transform it. At the same time, tempering a tornado to make it less extreme allows its considerable power to be harnessed. In this analogy my life is a tornado.

What attracts me is the possibility who you are makes available. It's the possibility, with regard to my life, of tempering the tornado. So I'm both the tornado ... AND ... I'm its temper-er. And the way you make available to me the possibility of tempering the tornado of my life is by being a tempered tornado.

Then you disappear, leaving me with my experience of my Self.

Communication Promise

E-Mail | Home

Permission