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




Waiting On You

St Helena, California, USA

November 23, 2007



This essay, Waiting On You, is the eighth in an open group Encounters With A Friend:
  1. Showing Up
  2. Poet Laureate
  3. A Man In The Crowd
  4. Real Men Cry
  5. A Different Set Of Rules
  6. Nametag: A True Story
  7. Half-Life
  8. Waiting On You
  9. Erotica On Schedule
  10. A House On Franklin Street
  11. NeXT
  12. Reflection On A Window
  13. Here And There
  14. How To Enroll The World
  15. Demonstration
  16. Two Of Me II: Confirmation Not Correction
  17. Holiday Spectacular
  18. Hello! How Are Things Going For You?
  19. Regular Guy
  20. A Scholar And A Gentleman
  21. Images Of You
  22. With Nothing Going On
  23. Where No One Has Gone Before
  24. Attachment: Causeway Between Islands
  25. If You're Not Then Don't
  26. Images Of You II
  27. Living Where Life Is
  28. Create Me The Way I Am
  29. How Do You Spell The Sound A Ratchet Makes?
  30. You Don't Ask "Why Me?"  When It's Raining II
  31. The Stink Of Zen
  32. Sitting Quietly In A Room Alone
  33. Footsteps On Metal Stairs
so far, in that order.




I was waiting on you. But my life got in the way.

Looking for a time to meet, you were open, I had prior commitments. No problem, I thought, I'll look at a new date.

Not so fast ...  My "no problem" is  a problem. Aghast, I notice my commitments get between you and I being together.

What's possible here? That's the question. But before I can ask it, for just one moment there's a thought "Impossible. Can't do it. Won't work.". It's more than that actually. It's I'm disappointed, mortified. It's a throwback from a past life. It's a human enough emotion to have. The trouble is for just a moment, for just one  moment, I believe it.

In the split second it takes for me to believe it, to buy into it, the opportunity flies away. The falcon's taken off, now soaring again at a dizzy height. Yet but a moment ago it descended in unhurried spiral swoops to alight on my shoulder, uncompromising, tame, trusting, this majestic killer perfect machine. O, I am fortune's fool ...  It took me too long, reveling in the faux triomphe  of the simple synchronicity of the moment.

Nothing with you is without value. Everything  with you has value. Anything. Everything. I'm thrown to be seduced by the allure of the predictable, of the comfortable. Not surprisingly that distinction gets clear in my listening for your spoken stand for that which is unpredictable, for that with which comfort isn't necessarily an option.

That's when I notice I've not got my attention  on my intention. That's when I notice I'm going for the cheese and end up in the jaws of a bear trap instead.

The brilliance in the way you've set it up is just in the process of life itself  the perniciousness  with which predictability and comfort creep into my life is confronted. The false promise  of the predictability and of the comfort is I'll get somewhere. When I stand in being here going nowhere, I can be with you even when I'm without you. I see In inventing the possibility of being with you, I start to see my bias toward predictability and comfort isn't workable. If I give it up, what would become available?

In the face of giving it up there's a new opening. I get a new idea. Then I get another idea, another possibility.

In the instant the new possibility comes, the falcon suddenly reappears, a mere dot on the dizzy height, wings outstretched gliding on a thermal, eyeing me, considering landing on my shoulder again, watching me and everything in every direction crystal clearly ...



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