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 Question
Napa Valley, California, USA
December 6, 2019
"Choose a problem that's worth your time.
World hunger
is worth your time. Making a million dollars isn't."
... Sandra "Sandy" Bernasek (1951 - 2018),
Landmark Forum
Leader,
quoted by the Pittsburgh City Paper
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
... James Thurber
"Life flows on within you and without you."
... The Beatles, Within You Without You
"It all turns out the way it turns out, with me or without me (mostly
without me). So the question is: what is
my life
going to be about?"
...
Laurence Platt
Some questions have one answer. "How many hydrogen atoms are there in a
molecule of
water?"
is an example. Others have lots of answers. "What is the best
music
ever composed?" is an example. And still others have no answers. "What
was your
face
before you were born?" is an example
(Zenkoans
/ questions like these tease out satoric insights rather than answers).
This essay enables a context that empowers questions. Take "What is
my life
going to be about?". Whether the question has one answer, lots of
answers, or no answers, I notice I'm seduced by the allure of its
answers when the real power comes from enabling a context for
the question.
What gets in my way of powerfully asking "What is
my life
going to be about?"? That's to say, what gets in the question's way of
calling me to ask it powerfully? Two things, both of which
I'll call
"backgrounds".
The first is the
background
of "Life is
empty and meaningless.".
The second is the
background
of "It all turns out the way it turns out, with me or without me.". Uh
oh! So no matter what
my life
is going to be about, it's
empty and meaningless?
And no matter what
my life
is going to be about, it all turns out the way it turns out anyway,
with me or without me? Against these
backgrounds,
the question "What is
my life
going to be about?" is daunting.
To resolve this anomaly, this conundrum, I had to surrender my
already always
listening
for existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre eg "Life is
empty and meaningless"
which has no opening for full
Self-expression)
and instead consider listening for transformation
(Werner Erhard
eg "Life is
empty and meaningless,
and it's
empty and meaninglessthat it's
empty and
meaningless"
with its
gaping
opening for full
Self-expression).
In the process, what I discovered for myself is one way to enable a
context for the question "What is
my life
going to be about?" so it's powerful rather than daunting, is to simply
distinguish the meaning and significance I add to it.
You can discover for yourself that life is
empty and meaningless.
But look: don't stop there. Consider
Werner's
coaching: it's
empty and meaninglessthat it's
empty and
meaningless.
That gives us an opening for full
Self-expression
in which we're free to choose what our lives are going to be about. On
the other hand, when I make "Life is
empty and meaningless"
mean something / signify something, I obfuscate (fog over) any opening
there is, with my own arrogance ("I meaning-maker").
Having distinguished that, I can ask the question powerfully against a
background
of both "Life is
empty and meaningless"
as well as "It all turns out the way it turns out, with me or without
me", now that both are simply what's so. Now I've completely
recontextualized
(I love that word) those
backgrounds
against which to inquire into what
my life
is going to be about, and in the process I've also discovered a bedrock
platform
on which to stand and engage in this inquiry. These recontextualized
backgrounds
and this bedrock
platform
enable a context for the question so that it's no longer daunting to
grapple with it: now it's both freeing and powerful instead.
So, having reset the
stage
and enabled a context for the question, what ismy life
going to be about?
Read
along with me as I ask the question of myself. As I do so, ask it of
yourself too. Simply
reading
it along with me? Of marginal interest. Asking it of yourself?
Discovering what there is to discover for yourself? Transformational.
What
my life
is going to be about is making a difference (for
the world),
making a contribution (for others), generating a quality of life that's
worth living (for myself), discovering who I might really
be as a human being like a possibility, living that possibility
as fully as I can live it, and
sharing
it as widely as possible for as long as possible - not like something
I've discovered that's already "me"
and "mine" but rather like something I'm ongoingly
discovering that's newly "WE"
and "ours".