"The being of human beings is a mechanism, the end of which, the
purpose, the design function of which is
survival. You see now,
you can't hear it because you know it's
going to work out. You're just sure it's going to work
out. It isn't going to work out. Really! It is not
going to work out. This is all there is. This, this what you
got, is what there is - never mind
the fairy tale.
This is it! It is not going to work out because it
has already worked out! This is the way it worked out.
You don't like that? Too bad ..."
Werner's
quote above ie
the source quote for
this essay,
indeed most if not all of
Werner's work
in its entirety, could be said to be predicated on its blunt axiomatic
excerpt "... this is it!, it is not going to work out
because it has already worked out!, this is the way it
worked out ...". Furthermore, you and I have
opinions,
hopes, dreams, and expectations based on that this isn't
"it", at least that it's not "it" yet but eventually it
will (indeed, should) be "it", and will all soon turn out
some other way, some better way, some different way, in
the latter of which we're sure we'll live, like in some ever-hoped-for
fairy tale.
When I first
committed tosharingWerner's ideas
with velocity (which called me to first come to grips with them and
confront my own personal misgivings), people were dismayed by the
pragmatism of discarding
the fairy tale.
They considered that to be a dark, negative outlook for the future. To
the contrary, it's an accurate, powerful, no-nonsense view of life the
way it is, and not the way we'd like it to be. And life (to be sure)
turns out the way it turns out, not the way we'd like it to turn out.
And there never was, ever, one single promise, agreement, or
commitment
from
Life itself
that it would turn out any other way.
Tell the truth about it: life never promised you
a fairy tale.
Yes you expect one. It's what you add on. And then, living
in the faux hope of
the fairy tale,
you get dismally out of sync with living life the way it is (unrequited
hope for
the fairy tale
becomes the inadequate compensation for not living life the way it is).
That's a pause for some serious
reflection.
We've built entire worlds, policies, attitudes,
belief systems,
expectations, relationships etc on a way of life and living that's
completely out of step with reality, the folly and tragic global
ramifications of which are almost
too much
to bear, almost
too much
to let in.
This isn't about debating something or proving anything. It's certainly
not about changing from living one way to living some other way. It's
definitely not about grieving the passing of the folly of
the fairy tale.
Rather it's about making a simple distinction between the way we'd like
life to be ie the way we'd like it to turn out, and the way life is ie
the way life actually turned out. You don't
adapt to "This is the way it turned out.". You
recognize it (Gee! I hope you get that.). You
act,
you do whatever you do, and all the while you recognize that this is
the way life turned out. That's a different order of things than
acting
in the hope that it will all
someday,
somehow turn out a different way, some other better way. Look: only
a Big man
can resolve for himself the dastardly enigma that no matter
what he does, it turns out the way it turns out
anyway (which is an entirely new context for good deeds and
humanitarian
efforts).
It's very
Zen.
And
it's really simple. But it's
not always easy.
It's brutal, in fact. It calls for an entirely new scrutiny not just of
the way we do what we do but also of who we assume ourselves to be when
we're doing it. But more than that, isn't it unavoidable /
isn't it indisputable that life did turn out this way and not some
other way, yes? Life did not produce
a fairy tale.
It just produced
this
and nothing but
this.
Not liking
this
(like having an
opinion
about it which you're invested in) merely compounds the folly - about
which
Werner
says "Too bad ...". In any other conversation, "too bad"
likely carries a certain callous indifference with it. Here it's
empathetic, indeed ruthlessly compassionate (and watch:
this is
the written word:
in
the written word
you can't see him smile).
