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




The Cavalry's Not Coming

Santa Barbara, California, USA

January 21, 2012



This essay, The Cavalry's Not Coming, is the companion piece to It is also the ninth in a group of twenty reflections of God: It is also the seventh in a group of twenty written in Santa Barbara:
  1. Santa Barbara
  2. Unbelievable
  3. Give Me Money (That's What I Want?)
  4. True Gold
  5. Getting Into Your World
  6. You Say Stop: About Resisting Transformation
  7. The Cavalry's Not Coming
  8. On This Team Everyone's The Leader
  9. Fireside Chat
  10. The Next Best Thing
  11. Full Circle, Full Spiral
  12. Truth, And What's True
  13. Snowflakes In A Furnace
  14. Something In The Air
  15. Vocal Prowess
  16. Flames In My Rearview Mirror
  17. Back Nine
  18. Chess II
  19. But And And II
  20. My Baby Girl, Now A Bride
in that order.




Whenever I'm near him, he's preoccupied - you know, he's never really present. His attention is always on something else. But I know it isn't on anything specific. It's more like he's holding back, more like he's not participating fully in Life even though he walks and talks and functions as if  he is. He never really lives  his life. Yes he exists, that's for sure. But lives? No, not really. And even when he does on occasion appear to actually live his life, whatever it is he's doing really isn't  living his life. What he's doing is acting out a dress rehearsal  for his life, a practice for his life, a dummy run  of his life. He's expecting someone or some-thing  to come along and ... well ... save  him from being responsible for his life. He thinks until this happens, his real  life hasn't yet started ie what he's living now is just its beta  version.

So he's postponing starting his real life until this someone or something comes along and takes care of things for him. He's still tenderly naïve. The only causal relationship he has with what he wants is he wants it. He hasn't yet figured out wanting whatever he wants isn't enough to get him what he wants  (as Werner Erhard may have said). He says what he wants, yet he never follows through taking action to get what he wants. As a baby, he learned what babies learn: cry loudly when you want food, and you'll get fed. As an adult, he still operates in this now outdated (and quaint) paradigm.

He's waiting for God (or Godot  as Samuel Beckett may have said) to come and provide him with what he wants. And if indeed he's waiting for Godot, then he could be playing either the Vladimir or the Estragon of the piece - I can't determine which. Even if it lands right at his feet, he doesn't pick up the ball and run with it. He's waiting for a better time  to come (in other words he's waiting for "someday  ...") before he'll make any moves which stake a claim to his own future.

In many of our conversations I ask him to consider the possibility God's already  come. I suggest the fact he's alive  is proof God's also already blessed him and completely empowered  him. I suggest all God wants him to do now is go out into the world with this blessing his God-given life is, and live it - fully and abundantly. But whenever I suggest this to him, a blank stare  crosses his face, and I never know whether he can't  get what I'm suggesting or whether he won't  get what I'm suggesting. He says he prefers to get all the directives for his life from Jesus Christ and his church. I suggest he invite Jesus Christ and his church to participate with him in Werner Erhard's programs.

In the movies, when all is lost, when the settlers are about to be massacred by the bad guys, there's the sound of a trumpet and thundering horses' hooves approaching. The cavalry's coming! The lead rider comes into view holding high the Stars and Stripes, the United States flag billowing beautifully. Yaaay  (everybody cheer). The bad guys are vanquished. Yaaay. The settlers are saved. Yaaay. Yaaay. Yaaay.

Real Life isn't a movie. It's not a beta version either. In real Life, the cavalry's not coming. Having created the machine, God's most mysterious, most magnificent, most brilliant work was disappearing into it aftwerwards. Realizing this (contrary to what happens in the movies) is the opportunity to take charge of your own life. It's the opportunity to start really living.



Communication Promise E-Mail | Home

© Laurence Platt - 2012 through 2024 Permission