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Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
Laurence Platt 70th Birthday
June 8, 2020
Dear
Family
and
Friends,
Thank You for
showing up.
Thank You for being "here" with me today, just another
extraordinarily
ordinary
day on
Planet Earth
- except today marks my 70th year on
the planet,
something that once didn't seem it would ever come to pass, yet
it did.
My day started at dawn with exercises,
yoga,
and a run. Then, as I was catching up with
e-mail,
there was a knock at the door, and I looked up to see
Joshua
holding a cherry pie with
seven
candles, and
seven
colored balloons, one of each for each
decade.
The thing is
Joshua
was supposed to be in Oregon! He drove down to surprise me.
What a gift! I was speechless. Both wearing masks, we went on a 3
mile hike in and around the Coombsville appellation, the
Cowboy Cottage
milieu. Even though I resisted an overwhelming urge to hug him
(it hurt), what could be a better way to
celebrate?
In the evening, the two of us in Napa, and
Alexandra
and her beau Harrison in
Santa Barbara,
Zoom-ed for dinner which they ordered remotely and had
delivered to
Cowboy Cottage.
Dinner was capped by the pièce de
résistance: an icecream tasting of six fine
icecreams which
Alexandra
and Harrison had also shipped here, packed in dry ice (#1? the
"Lemon & Blueberries Parfait" - hands down).
I'm not tempted to mouth any bon mots about the news
of
the world
as I turn 70 - so I won't. But I will say it's just another
tumultuous year in my ever increasing appreciation of the time
you and I have together. I mean the time we have to really
be together - like this, like now - knowing
that with lockdowns, deadly diseases, civil unrest, racial
inequality, and financial uncertainty, the context in which it
all
shows up,
regardless of our
opinions
and preferences about the way it's
turning out,
is eternal, unchanging. It's who I am. It's who you are. So this
is love. And ours is
the love affair
we were born to have. It's beautiful, transformative. And if you
don't pay
attention,
you'll miss it completely. This is the miracle of being alive.
So I'm going to say thank you for being my birthday
guests
today - just another
extraordinarily
ordinary
day on
Planet Earth
- and I want you to know how much, how totally I appreciate you.
With my Love and Respect and Thanks,
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