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




Platinum Anniversary

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

April 29, 2019

"We all have relationships, and if you can complete your relationship with your parents, you can have incredible relationships, magical relationships, miraculous relationships." ... 
This essay, Platinum Anniversary, is the sixteenth in a group of twenty one on Parents: Conversations For Transformation receives its one million four hundred thousandth view with the publishing of Platinum Anniversary.

I am indebted to my parents Andee and Dr Manfred Platt who inspired this conversation.




In hindsight (and hindsight is always  20/20 vision) I see I've successively held two majorly differing views of my parents. They're not the "bad" view and the "good" view. Neither are they the "wrong" view and the "right" view. I don't mean it in a being judgemental  way. Rather I mean they're my "immature" view and my "mature" view. I mean it in a being responsible  way. Oh, and after I distinguished the second view, I realized I'd also once held the first view not as a view but as "The Truth".

My first view began as a child, then developed and embellished further as I became a teenager, and a young man. My first view wasn't (and couldn't have been) based on being a parent myself - that would come later. Comparing my second view of my parents ie the view I got when I became a parent myself (who they are, and the job they did raising me and my siblings) to my first view, is to compare apples to oranges. The second's domain is being responsible; the first's is being judgemental.

It was only much later after I'd raised three children myself that I could get onto the bottom rung of fully appreciating who my parents are and the job they did. It was a big deal for me - not just realizing what they experienced parenting us, but also how I judged their job while being clueless about what it takes to be a parent.

My parents would have been married for seventy years today Monday April 29, 2019 ie it's their platinum anniversary. In their honor I distributed the following announcement to one hundred-plus of our family members by e-mail (and with this website posting, to one thousand five hundred plus more people worldwide):




Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More




Platinum Anniversary

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

April 29, 2019


[attachment: Platt Family Tree.xls]

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA
Monday April 29, 2019



Good midnight Everyone.

This is Laurence.
Andee Platt née Morrison
1926 - 2018
Asher Manfred Platt
1916 - 2001
Married Friday April 29, 1949, London England
Photography restoration by Ana Paula Monteiro Tavares Zolezzi
Today Monday April 29, 2019 is Andee and Manfred's platinum 70th wedding anniversary ie my and my sister Anthea and my brother Brandon's parents, Alexandra and Christian and Joshua and Judith and David Asher's grandparents, and Noah and Arwen's great-grandparents.

Only after raising three children of my own did I fully realize what Mom and Dad experienced as they raised us. That's what it took for me to get what it was like for them. They were, in a word, awesome parents. They loved us. They provided for us. And in doing so, they left it all on the playing field.

Look: no one knows better than anyone else how to raise children. No one has the inside scoop  (so to speak). This job doesn't come with an instruction manual. You give it your best shot, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And in the end, the way you determine whether you succeeded or not, is you look at how your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren turned out.

On that basis alone, Mom and Dad's success is huge. It's rich and full and generous. It will make a difference in our family and in the world for many generations to come.

Mom and Dad, I love you. Thank you for what you made available for all of us. Thank you for what you made possible. Mostly: thank you for my life - I want you to know I'm using it well.

Happy 70th wedding anniversary! Long may you reign.

I've attached the latest edition of our family tree (please discard all earlier versions). Mom and Dad's wedding is at co-ordinates E / 55 on spreadsheet #1.

Our family tree is also available online where to date it's been viewed nine hundred and seven times. 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  ...]

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

With my Love and Respect,
Photography by Gonneke Spits



Communication Promise E-Mail | Home

© Laurence Platt - 2019 through 2023 Permission
Q: What does the job of being a parent have in common with Spaceship Earth? A: neither of them come with an instruction manual (as Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller may have said).

When I was young and immature, I knew I was young but I didn't know I was immature. It never occurred to me (not for one moment) that my parents were figuring out parenting as they went along. In my immature view, they already had parenting down cold, so I judged them accordingly. There was no room in my view for how they strove to adapt, for their sacrifice, for what they had to figure out, for what it cost. Being ignorant of what it takes, all of that was beyond my peripheral vision.

Now, as a parent myself I've experienced all of the above first-hand. Look: as a parent, you can't not  experience it all tout de suite  for yourself. Because of that, I've had a breakthrough in the view through which I see my parents and the job they did. It's a view in a new light, a mature view, a compassionate view, a forgiving view, indeed a deeply grateful view. I love and respect what my parents did raising us. I appreciate it so much. Seriously, I'm in awe of it. What they did moves me to tears, blows me away. Yes it's all in hindsight. But hindsight is always 20/20 vision. I get it, and now it's complete for me.

Here's another Q: is it possible to avoid having a mature view of parents, and instead cling to the immature view? A: yes, totally. But here's what's totally unavoidable: the degree to which we're incomplete with our parents, is the degree to which we're incomplete with people - which is to say the degree to which we're unwilling to complete  with our parents, is the degree to which we're left hamstrung incomplete with people. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it works. There's no way around it.

Specifically, the degree to which we're incomplete with our mothers (regardless of how we justify seeing them through the immature view) is the degree to which we're hamstrung incomplete with all women. The degree to which we're incomplete with our fathers (regardless of how we justify seeing them through the immature view) is the degree to which we're hamstrung incomplete with all men. So yes, we can avoid the mature view of our parents and continue to justify the immature view - but be warned ( *** SPOILER ALERT!  ***): it comes at an enormous cost ie it carries a hefty price tag.

Happy platinum anniversary Mom and Dad! Thank You for Everything. Long may you reign.


Communication Promise E-Mail | Home

© Laurence Platt - 2019 through 2022 Permission