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
Get A Life
Jacksonville, Florida, USA
September 25, 2009
It's easy to be a critic. It's easy to be a commentator. It's easy to
be a reporter. It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.
It's easy to be an armchair pundit. It's easy to
gossip.
It's easy to tell tales. It's easy for me to regard myself as better
than other people. It's easy for me to consider myself to be
different than other people. It's easy for me to make
other people wrong and to make myself right.
God!
It's so damn easy.
All of the above are really just ways of expressing an
opinion, aren't they? And everyone has an opinion, don't we?
One of the most shocking discoveries of my life was when I found out I
have an opinion. I'm using the word "when" literally,
exactly, and
rigorously
for emphasis.
Let me explain. Discovering I have an opinion wasn't
shocking. When I first discovered I have an opinion, it was as if I'd
reached around to touch the back of my skull and discovered, for the
first time, my cranial bones protrude a certain way. Everyone's got
cranial bones, and everyone's cranial bones protrude a certain way.
Everyone's got an opinion, just like everyone's got protruding cranial
bones. Nothing shocking about it. No big deal.
No, the shocking aspect of this discovery for me, rather,
was in discovering I have an opinion, I saw my opinion as distinct from
"the truth".
Until that moment, I'd never made the distinction between my opinion
and "the truth". Until that moment, my opinion was
"the truth" for me. Aghast, I saw because it's so easy to
have an opinion, it's also so
god‑damned
easy to obfuscate "the truth" with my opinion. Worse than that, when I
obfuscate "the truth" with my opinion, I almost never
notice I'm doing it.
We often use the phrase "to grow up" to convey reaching
the age of adulthood. We ask "Where did you grow up?" when
we want to know in which city and country someone lived between birth
and the age of eighteen as if it will tell us something profound
about that person. Yet even if they say they grew up in in Wichita
Kansas USA, for example, it hardly tells us anything profound about
them - at best, it only sheds
light on
their accent.
I grew up in Cape Town South
Africa,
yet the fact that
I grew up in Cape Town South
Africa,
actually tells you next to nothing about
who I really am
as a human being. A more pertinent question to ask, rather than "Where
did you grow up?", may be "When did you grow up?" -
and I'm not alluding to any particular year either.
Rather than a particular year, the domain of "When
did you grow up?" is the critical insight or collection of
critical insights into
who you really are
which tip the balance away from childish ways and toward true
adulthood. There's at least one insight into
who you really are
as a human being which tips the balance away from childish ways and
toward true adulthood, toward seniority, toward
transformation - in other words, during which you can
truly say you grew up - in the full dignity of the phrase.
And it's not a momentary insight, it's not something temporary,
it's not even a peak experience either. If it's
authentically the insight during which you really grew up, you
didn't just have it once, reveled in it for a while, and then
tired of it, forgot about it, moving on instead to pastures greener. If
it's the insight during which you grew up, it's
stayed with you. It's more than that, actually. If it's
the insight during which you grew up, it's become a
stand you've taken for the rest of your life.
One of the insights during which I grew up was the insight that my
opinion is distinct from "the truth". It wasn't necessarily a
pleasant insight. As I said, I was aghast
when it first came on, given how heavily I was invested in being a
critic, in being a commentator, in being a reporter, in being a
Monday morning quarterback, in being an armchair pundit,
in
gossiping,
in telling tales, in regarding myself as better than other people, in
considering myself to be different than other people, in
making other people wrong and myself right. In fact, it was humbling
and unpleasant. Nonetheless, it was an insight during which I grew up,
during which I got my life, during which I
gotwho I really am.
When you get
who you really are,
that is to say when you literally get a life, when you get
your own life (and, face it: before you get
who you really are,
you don't have a life - you may be alive, but you don't
yet have a life), you start to notice it's your
human-ness, your humanity which makes you
magnificent. Yet
paradoxically,
your human-ness, your humanity isn't
who you really are,
although it's what makes you a human being. Being a critic, being a
commentator, being a reporter, being a Monday morning
quarterback, being an armchair pundit,
gossiping,
telling tales, regarding yourself as better than other people,
considering yourself to be different than other people,
making other people wrong and yourself right? That's what human
beings do.
Cows go "Moo moo!", pigs go "Oink oink!", chickens go "Cheep cheep!",
and human beings go "Blah blah blah!" (as Old MacDonald may have said).
Old MacDonald was a wise, wise man. "Blah blah blah!" is just what
we human beings do. It's our
sound and
fury
which vents and justifies us, yet doesn't change one ...
god-damned
... thing!
Here's a pertinent comment on how language, when reduced to
jargon,
is disempowered. Typically when we say to someone "Get a life!",
it's spoken with disdain ie it's a derogatory comment. But spoken
rigorously,
"Get a life!" really directs people toward the source of
their own power, toward the distinction between their
human-ness ie between their humanity, and
who they really are
- in other words, toward the distinction between their
opinion and "the truth".
It's life altering. It's a context shifting insight.