This essay,
There's Always The Next Piece,
is the tenth in the open second group of
Experiences Of A Friend
(click
here
for the complete first group of thirty five
Experiences Of A Friend):
It's been there in the
background
for as long as I've been around
Werner's work.
The thing in the background is a persistent
thought
I always promised myself I'd pay more attention to
someday
... and yet
never did. The
thought
was that no matter what I do with what I get from
participating
in
this work,
no matter how intently and how purposefully I complete each venture
into it (that's each ad-venture actually), there's always the
next piece to complete ie there's no let-up, there's never
any down-time. When I finally started paying attention to "there's
always the next piece", I realized I'd been looking at
the work of
transformation
from the perspective of trying to finish it. I'd been trying to
get it all done - like you "get your job done" and then it's finished,
you know? Just like that. It was the only
context
I had for it.
So I continued looking at the skew toward "trying to get it all done"
ie trying to finish the job, until one day I discovered this: if
this work
was about finishing the job ie if it was about setting people up with a
goal to realize, with a place to get to, with something to attain, with
things to accomplish, with an end in mind, then it wouldn't be
the work of
transformation.
Really. It couldn't be. To be sure, as a result of
engaging in
this work,
people meet goals that everyone knows can only be reached
in dreams. They get to places in life they never ever imagined they
could get to. They attain heights they once
thought
were unscalable. They accomplish things which they once deemed
impossible to accomplish. But here's the thing (listen carefully):
those are its results. They're not its ongoingly implemented
design. If you look at its ongoingly implemented design, it's
open-ended. There are
gaping holes.
There's always another
breakthrough
to target. There's always the next piece.
And watch: if you look carefully, you'll see the new pieces aren't
merely recycled old pieces.
Transformation
as a shared
platform
is constantly expanding and opening up, especially as more and more
people discover the
access
to it. What's visible now to a group of people, will soon become the
baseline for what's visible at a greater depth to an even larger group
of people. And for
the work of
transformation
to have
integrity
and to be
authentic,
it has to keep materializing its
newer pieces
as they come into focus - as they do ongoingly. There's no
resting on
laurels.
And if there is (as tempting as it may be), it's not a component of
the work of
transformation.
If you asked a hundred or a thousand or a million people to share
their experiences of
Werner,
you may get a hundred or a thousand or a million unique responses. But
there'd be a sub-text which would run through all of them, especially
from those who know who he is and who've taken the time ie who've made
it their business to
be around him.
This sub-text is he's
always in
action.
There's always the next piece. There's no let-up. There's never any
down-time. Now you could say "That's
Werner!"
and / or you could say "That's
transformation!",
and both would be fine. But the truth is
probably closer to "That's
Wernerbringing forth
transformation".
He's always in action. There's always the next piece. There's always
Werner
always bringing forth the next piece. Look: you want the definition of
"power"? That's it.
In this sense,
the work of
transformation
is like a finely-tuned train running on a track. You can board the
train at any time. You can stay on board as long as you like, and you
can disembark whenever you choose. The train however, keeps on running,
so there's an opportunity to reboard it again any time you want to.
Said another way with another
analogy,
Werner's work
is in effect like
our living room
in which you're welcome to visit, to stay as long as you like, and to
leave whenever you like, taking with you whatever you find valuable.
We'll be here whenever you choose to visit again. And when you do, you
may rediscover some familiar pieces which you recognize from the last
time you were here. But in all likelihood, what you'll find is the next
piece, and then the next piece, and then
the newest piece,
and then the one after that. Look: if that's not what you find, then
you should vacate the premises immediately, given you'd have obviously
gone to the wrong address by mistake.
