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

Happy 64th Birthday To The Mother Of My Children

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

March 23, 2019

"The cost to me of not doing so. I'm unwilling to pay the cost of carrying a resentment (or whatever) around, so I draw on the intelligence of forgiving."


...

answering Laurence Platt's question "On what do you draw to forgive people who are hardest to forgive?" in Questions For A Friend II III (Straight Talk)

"People often don't understand what is involved in forgiving. They think that if somebody does something wrong, and you forgive them, that is like saying that it was alright to do it that time - but don't dare do it again. But life doesn't work that way; and it's stupid or hypocritical to forgive someone on that basis. If somebody does something, you can be sure that he or she will do it again. That is why I prefer to talk about 'making space' and 'completion'. To the extent that forgiveness is involved, it is more like self-forgiving and self-acceptance. When you forgive yourself for something, you have to create the space for that thing to exist. For whatever you resist, and fail to make space for, will indeed manifest itself in you."


...

"Resenting is like taking poison, hoping the other guy will die."

... Nelson Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Madiba Tata (uBawom)Khulu Mandela

This essay, Happy 64th Birthday To The Mother Of My Children, is the companion piece to This Is Inspiration! II: Out Of The Crucible.

It is also the sequel to The Five Of Us.

I am indebted to Jolin Beth Halstead who inspired this conversation.

We've all been in a relationship that ended (at least one of them, yes?). There was a time when being in it was everything, when being in it occupied all our available thought, when being in it occupied all our available action, when being in it occupied all our available feelings and emotions, when being in it occupied all our available passion, when being in it occupied all available future, indeed when being in it occupied all available love. And then it was no more.

Now, if you can give up playing the right-wrong he-said-she-said blame-game, "it was no more" is exactly what happened, and that's all that happened: first it was, and then it was no more. And in time, you stopped thinking about it, you stopped acting it out, its feelings and emotions ceased, its passion evaporated ... and then even its love, along with all its memories, faded.

There's one exception I know to this predictable unfolding of events when a relationship ends, and then (basically) disappears. It's when you have children with someone. When you have children with someone, there's nothing that has the ability to end the relationship. No break-up is forceful enough and no separation is malicious enough to break the bond of having children together. That's forever. And although it may seem like an impossibility at the time, the bond of having children together even has the power to heal the dislocation and the disappointment of a love affair ending, the sadness of a split, even the blunt-force trauma of a divorce.

On Saturday March 23, 2019 I distributed the following announcement worldwide to ninety-eight-plus family and friends by e-mail (and now with this website posting, to one thousand five hundred plus more):

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

Happy 64th Birthday To The Mother Of My Children

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

March 23, 2019

[attachments: Platt Family.jpg; Platt Family Tree.xls]

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA
Saturday March 23, 2019

Good morning Everyone.

This is Laurence.

Photography by Gonneke Spits

"Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm sixty four ..".

Please join me and the other ninety seven people listening this distribution, in wishing Jolin Beth, the mother of my / our three incredible children Alexandra, Christian, and Joshua, a happy 64th birthday today.

The next chapter of Jolin's awesome life, is shaping up to be as creative, as generous, as passionate, as powerful, and as healing as any and all of her previous chapters combined.

Jolin is a force of nature. After she created her, God broke the mold. There will never be another woman like her again. Ever. She is a saint. Planet Earth and Mother Nature are celebrating her birthday today, as are our children and me. We are inspired by her extraordinary presence and everything she makes possible for us and for all the people in her orbit and for the future of the world.

Happy 64th birthday Jolin Beth!

I love you. We love you. The quality you keep bringing forth tirelessly in life, is extraordinary. The world wants and needs more of it. A lot more.

Attached is a family photograph (left to right, top to bottom: Christian, Jolin, Alexandra, Laurence, Joshua - circa December 2002). I've also attached the latest release of our family tree which currently documents six hundred and sixty six people over seven generations (the .pdf has been distributed hundreds of times, and since I posted it online, it's been viewed nine hundred and five times on the internet). Jolin's co-ordinates are C / 64 (no, they really are C / sixty four - there are no coincidences).

To view its future updates online, go to:

http://www.laurenceplatt.com

then click on

Family Tree

which is on the left under

Laurence Platt Works Links

You will need a user name:

familytree

and a password:

xxxxxxx [... password masked for privacy ...]

which happens to be our generations-old Lithuanian family name from which Platt is derived.

Both the user name and the password should be entered in lower case.

Again, happy 64th birthday Jolin Beth! Long may you reign.

With my Love and Respect,

Communication Promise

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Listen: there are always good, justifiable, even intelligent arguments to stay resentful of someone. But what they all come down to is rationalizing taking poison in order to punish the other guy (as Nelson Mandela may have said). And I bin there before (as Huckleberry Finn may have said).

If you're in the middle of the throes of being resentful, there's no easy way to forgive. We all know that. So you have to be like Nike ... and just do it. That is simple. Indeed forgiving is simple, even if it's not always easy.

Here are but three great arguments in favor of forgiving - and they're all very simple:

1)	in the long run, forgiving is a lot easier on your heart then resenting (honest it is!);
2)	big people forgive (it's what they do), only small people hold on to resenting;
3)	forgiving rewires your brain (literally) making space available for more worthwhile things.

<aside>

Listen: if that third argument is the only one of the three which resonates with you about forgiving, that's the smart one ie it's the very smart one.

<un-aside>

Happy 64th birthday Jolin Beth, the mother of my children! Long may you reign.

Communication Promise

E-Mail | Home

Permission