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
Somewhere Else:
The Cure*
Silver Oak Cellars, Oakville, California, USA
October 6, 2019
*** SPOILER ALERT! ***:
There's no place better than this, there's no place better than here,
there's no place better than exactly where you are right now.
If you hear "There's no place better than this, there's no place better
than here, there's no place better than exactly where you are right
now" as a fact, it'll be be easy to get tangled in all the "yeah
but"s, "how 'bout"s, and "what if"s which invariably
come up
around it, to the point where it'll cease to be useful. Rather, listen
it like a possibility. To listen it like a possibility, is to
listen it as a new, invented place to be, a new, invented place
to stand, a new, invented place to come from - that
is to say it's to listen it as a new, invented way of being with the
material. It's a place you already are, so it's not new in
that way. What's new about it is you intentionally
generate it here, rather than hoping it will show up by itself
somewhere else. If listened other than as a new possibility, it'll
sound like more of
the same old same old.
There's no avoiding
circumstances,
surroundings, the location, all the goings on. We travel. We
move. We migrate extensively to avoid / escape the
circumstances
and to find better ones. The truth is there's not one single place on
God's green Earth where there are no
circumstances,
some of which are great, some of which are bad, and some of which are
really bad. Everywhere we go, there are
circumstances.
We can't avoid them. To be human is to inherit, to encounter, to be
immersed in
circumstances
- anywhere, everywhere. There's no way out. The only worthwhile
choice which is ours to make in this regard, is who we'll
be, given what's going on.
*** SPOILER ALERT! ***:
It's never better somewhere else. Really.
If there's an inherent
barrier
to an assertion such as this, it's a
barrier
of listening (if you will). It's a
barrier
which has the power to block the inherent value from showing up. This
barrier
is reinforced and abetted with various rebar flavors of
"Everyone knows ...". Here are three examples of this rebar:
everyone knows it's better to be somewhere else other than
in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm; everyone knows it's
better to be somewhere else other than in Banda Ache during the
tsunami; everyone knows it's better to be somewhere else other than on
Robben Island during the
halcyon
apartheid years.
Each of those three "everyone knows"s are heard in the
realm of fact, not in the realm of possibility. And in the realm of
fact, yes each of them are arguably true. Yet without discounting the
integrity of the realm of fact and truth, the keys to the
kingdom (so to speak) aren't found there. The keys to the
kingdom are found in the realm of possibility. And the realm of
possibility is available everywhere, regardless of the
circumstances.
Ask
Nelson Mandela
on his Robben Island; ask Sydney Rittenberg in his China prison: none
of their extreme, dire
circumstances
could quench the possibility they stand for. It's an ability even the
most ordinary of us have.
*** SPOILER ALERT! ***:
The
circumstances
somewhere else won't free you. They simply seduce you away from the
power you have to create yourself being free, here.
Look:
I love to travel.
So this isn't a call to not take vacations, to not visit the pyramids
or the Galapágos. Rather it's a call to examine how we're
thrown to move the
circumstances
around (and to move ourselves around within the
circumstances)
hoping that doing so will free us. To do so is to miss out on our
fundamental power.
Changing the
circumstances
won't free us. It never has, even if trying to change them, is our
first go-to cure. It's we who have the power to create
being free for ourselves, whether that power is plausible to us or not,
regardless of whatever
circumstances
there are. And that power is always here. It's never somewhere
else.
*** SPOILER ALERT! ***:
Where you are is as good as it gets. If you have it that you must go
somewhere else for it to be better, I'm sorry but it won't be there
either.
*
The title of this essay,
Somewhere Else: The Cure,
is subtle.