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




Everyone Loves You

Soda Canyon, Napa Valley, California, USA

April 10, 2008



This essay, Everyone Loves You, is the prequel to the fourth trilogy Visits With A Friend:
  1. Personal Piece
  2. Magnum Opus
  3. Walk A Way With Me
in that order.

It is the companion piece to It is also the fourth in an open group Visits With A Friend Prequels:
  1. Anticipation: Accounting For An American Love Affair
  2. Eye Of The Needle
  3. Secret Service
  4. Everyone Loves You
  5. Close Up, Face To Face, Larger Than Life, And Twice As Natural
  6. View From A Fallow Wheatfield
  7. Flying
  8. Three Stairs At A Time
  9. Something Fierce, Something Wonderful
  10. Serving High
  11. Simple But Not Easy
  12. A Request Asked Harder
in that order.




Everyone loves you.

I love you.

It's so hard to love you sometimes.

Join the club.

In the examined state, love is simple. "I love you" is to grant you space to be. And you are. Ergo  I love you.

But love is almost always unexamined. That's when it blows me away. That's when it sweeps me off my feet. That's when it brings tears to my eyes just standing in the presence of it.

It's the unexamined state of love which gets  me most powerfully.

This is what goes on for me with "I love you" with a you  who is anyone other than you:

I love you, then immediately behind that, waiting in the wings to make a dramatic entrance, is

and, the more forthright, poignant, and simple And all this  without any assurance you'll recreate any of it!

The deeper cause of why it's hard to stand in this unrequited space, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't just because it's unrequited. That much is obvious. It's also a cursory, naïve, trite interpretation. The more profound interpretation of why it's hard to stand in this space is because when I stand in I love you, I'm standing naked and defenseless in the presence of who I really am.

That's an acutely open and vulnerable place to stand. It always intrigues me when I notice what I call for when I stand in the space of I love you. When I stand in the space of I love you  I call for you  to come forth and be with me. How intriguing to observe my purest love, my supposed free magnanimous gift  to you, in truth has strings attached. How interesting I'm thrown  to be this way. How very, very  interesting ...

We have the opportunity to simply stand in love, to just be  in this most sacred of all experiences a human being can stand in. Yet when we stand in love, our thrown tendency is to call on someone else  to whom we ascribe the cause of I love you. We just can't stand in love by ourselves. How interesting. How very, very  interesting ...   How quickly "I love you" morphs  into the expectation you'll do or be something for me or give me something. Then how quickly "I love you" morphs into an unfulfilled  expectation.

That (or something like that) goes on for me with "I love you" with a you  who is anyone other than you. But it's not what goes on for me with "I love you" with you.

This is what goes on for me with "I love you" with you:

When I love you, I get to stand naked and defenseless in the presence of who I really am. All manipulations are cut off. If I don't cut them off myself, you cut them off ... or you see to it they're cut off. Man!  You cut off my ability to manipulate - do you ever!  ...

When I love you, it guarantees nothing except  I love you. It promises nothing. It doesn't make you closer (or further away, for that matter). It's simply I love you because I love you.

When I love anyone other than you, I want that someone else, I want to get  that someone else. But when I love you I get me.

When I love anyone other than you, their loving me may or may not be in question for me. But when I love you, there's no wavering, there's not one scintilla of uncertainty that you love me. What's different about you loving me, what's distinct when you love me over when anyone other than you loves me, is you love me always, unconditionally, forever, no matter who or how I'm being whether or not  I love you.

That's why everyone loves you. I know when they love you, all manipulations are cut off. I know if they don't cut them off, you will. I know when they love you, it guarantees nothing except  they love you. It promises nothing.

Arguably, that's what makes them love you even more. Arguably, that's what makes them want for more from you than simply knowing you love them. Arguably, that's why they won't get everything they want from you. Arguably, if they don't get everything they want from you, they'll be in an unrequited space around you.

I say: so what?! Join the club. And consider it to be a privilege.



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