I am indebted to
Warren Bennis
who inspired this conversation.
There are things we discover for ourselves which then become so
interwoven in our lives that they require absolutely no thought to
implement - riding a bicycle, for example. You get on. You ride. It's
effortless. Yet there was a time before you discovered how to ride a
bicycle ie before you discovered balance when the idea of
staying upright on two wheels was simply not possible.
Writing
your life is like that. Once you discover it, it's effortless,
requiring no thought to implement. Before discovering it, it's not
possible. Perhaps the only real difference between discovering riding a
bicycle and discovering
writing
your life, is mostly we discover riding a bicycle as
young children.
But it's a long way into adulthood before we discover the possibility
of
writing
our lives - that is, if we discover it at all. So the difference is
mostly just a matter of timing.
Writing
your life is a subtle yet profound shift in what's possible for living.
When I first discovered it for myself, it inspired me. No, it was more
than that: it excited me. It rocked my
world.
It changed everything. I
reflected
on what had taken me so long to discover this seemingly most obvious of
sublime ways to live. Given what's at stake, it shouldn't have taken me
so long. Given how important it really is (in the true
sense of the
word:
it has import), it remains an enigma to me
why
I didn't discover it for myself sooner.
There wasn't much in society or in the education I experienced (which
was pretty darn good in all other respects, I might say) which prepared
me for life in
the real
world
by teaching me to
write
my life.
Why?
It's unfathomable that there wasn't. Could it simply be because
almost no one knew it was possible
and until I met
Werner,
there was no one to distinguish it vividly for me? Could it be that
straight
forward? Could that be all it is?
While I'm
alive
I live my life. That's the default. What does "the
default" mean? It means it's the only available option if I
make no other choices. It's what I'm left with. It's the way I
wind up being. It's the probable almost certain
future.
OK, so what other choices are there? For starters, there's
the non-default choice. The non-default choice is I can
write
my life like a script and live my life from that script. Here's the
thing: with or withoutwriting
my life like a script and living my life from that script, I live my
life. There's no way around that. But when I
write
my life and live my life from a script l've
written
myself, I have say in how it all
plays
out. Big difference. No, huge difference.
Writing
your life is
creating
what's going to happen tomorrow that's worthwhile, a matter of
creatinga future worth living
into.
To be sure, that's arguably the most important application of
writing
your own life. The whole arena of
creatinga future worth living
into,
the whole possibility of
inventing
possibility itself for how it's going to be
next
is either daunting or inspiring, depending on (it would seem) how much
responsibility you're willing to take for it. But ultimately it's
doable. It's really doable. It rewrites all the old rules, all the
tired old concepts we have about "the quality of life we live in the
present being determined by what occurred in the past", replacing them
with the
breakthrough,
more dynamic "the quality of life we live in the present being
determined by the
future we create to live
into"
(as
Werner Erhard
may have said).
Is it really that simple? Yes it really is that simple - that is, if
you're really willing to
listen
it that simple ... (Gee! I hope you get that!).
To complete this
conversation,
there's an illusion which has to be pierced (no
sacredcows
here!), and it's this:
writing
my life,
writing
a script for my
future,
can never be used to save me from a present I'm unwilling to
live, or from a past I wish I never had.
What do I mean by that?
Writing
my life includes
writing
a script for my
future,
and it also includes
writing
my present exactly the way it is (and exactly the way it
isn't) and my past exactly the way it was (and exactly the
way it wasn't). Until I can
write
my present exactly the way it is and exactly the way it isn't, and my
past exactly the way it was and exactly the way it wasn't without
changing one
god-damned
thing about either of them, I have no power to
write
my
future
ie I have no power to
write
my life.
I can't explain this. There doesn't seem to be any
earthly
reason for it to be like this. On
reflection
however it just
works
this way.