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




Completion:

An Inquiry Into The Point Of It All

Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery, Washington DC, and East Oak Street, Alexandria, Virginia,
USA

June 12, 2016



This essay, Completion: An Inquiry Into The Point Of It All, is the eighth in an octology on Completion: It is also the fourth in a group of four written in Washington DC, June 2016:
  1. City Girl
  2. Two Busies
  3. Washington DC Words
  4. Completion: An Inquiry Into The Point Of It All
in that order.

The group of four written in Washington DC, June 2016 is the sequel to Sitting II, and the prequel to Mind Control.

This essay is also the tenth in an ongoing collection with embedded Music Videos: Conversations For Transformation receives its one million fifty thousandth view with the publishing of Completion: An Inquiry Into The Point Of It All.

I am indebted to Jacques Coetzee who inspired this conversation, and to my daughter Alexandra Lindsey Platt who contributed material.




There's a conversation we all have (some of us have it ongoingly, some of us had it once and maybe never again) when the moment is right, when it's OK to let down our guard, when our concern about being vulnerable and expressing what we really  wonder about in our quiet introspections, isn't present. It's a kind of conversation which may happen in the cool of a late night, sitting around an open fire, sipping wine with people we love. But it is not limited to that scenario. In this quintessential conversation, wherever and whenever it occurs, we ("we" is you and I and all mankind throughout history) ask ourselves "What's the point of it all?". That defines it.

with Alexandra - Since I Don't Have You (The Skyliners)
Now there are various answers to this question. One answer is there's no  point to it at all other than whatever point we assign to it. That's really beautiful. And clearly there's a lot of already always listening  to drill through for all of us before that answer can be really heard (it's not an answer for the faint-hearted). Another answer is the point of it all is to survive. This is an answer which has a huge  number of subscribers. Yet another answer is the point of it all is to succeed, to be successful ("to succeed" of course is just a more applied, sophisticated version of the under-pinning, visceral "to survive"). And yet another answer is the point of it all is realizing God and having a personal relationship with God. This is an answer which also has very big numbers of adherents.

I've got another possible answer. No, it's not the right  answer (listen: I have no idea  what the right  answer is - not for myself, not for you, not for anyone). It is just another possible  answer. It is this: the point of it all is to be complete. That is it. There's an opportunity in life to be complete. It's an opportunity to be complete with myself. It is an opportunity to be complete with the people in my life. It is the opportunity to be complete with humanity. It is the opportunity to be complete with Life itself. It is the opportunity to express being complete.

In other words, what I'm proposing here is there's no point to it at all other than whatever point(s) we assign to it (I really  want you to get that - it's transformational), so if I'm going to assign any point to it, then I say the point of it all is to be complete, and to express being complete. That is all. And it's good enough for jazz.

For many, asserting the point of it all is being complete and expressing being complete, lands as a validation of ideas which have presenced themselves but have yet to be articulated. If it rings for you, the assertion evokes a "Yesss!!!". Others will meet this with interpretations of solipsism, a conversation noted in this Conversation For Transformation internet series. As I said, I don't know what the right answer to the question "What's the point of it all?" is, though I bet good money "being complete and expressing being complete" lives in direct experience, whereas interpretations of solipsism come from a cruder intellectual criticism devoid of authentic experience.

So why would we express being complete at all? I mean why would we bother?  If you're asking that question, you're unclear on the concept. The idea of expressing being complete isn't excerpted from a well-thought out strategy or a plan or a reason. Rather it comes from the experience of being complete itself. You express being complete because being complete calls you to express being complete. Fulfillment is a function of experiencing being complete and allowing being complete to express itself. To express being complete with the people in your life, is fulfilling. To express being complete with your own family (and in their own homes) is truly profound.



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