"I don't believe
in what I'm doing at all. I have absolutely
no belief
in what I'm doing. I already know how it's going to turn out. The way
it turns out is fait accompli. I mean there's nothing I can do
about the way it turns out. I know exactly how it's going to turn out.
You know, it's going to turn out exactly like it turns out. It's been
doing that for eons. So you say 'But then
Werner:
what's your motive? What are you working all those hours for?'. I'm
not motivated. There isn't any motive. There's no damn
vision motivating me. You know, if I stopped doing it
tomorrow, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. And if I keep
doing it right to the end, it won't make any difference. The only
thing that's going to happen is what happens. But that doesn't fit
into our structure. That doesn't fit into our categories."
...
responding to an assertion that he
believes
in what he's doing because he's motivated by a vision
After literally
decades
of
being around Werner,
trying on his speaking, and intently
observing
the way life turns out, what I see is life turns out the way it
turns out. "Oh", some challenge "so you
believe
in fate, you're a fatalist?" or "Oh, so you
believe
the way life turns out is pre-determined ... like destiny?".
Actually no,
I don't believe
in fate or destiny. It's simply
observable
(even if it's not intellectual or rational)
that life turns out the way it turns out. Whether there's fate or not,
life turns out the way it turns out. Whether there's destiny or not,
life turns out the way it turns out. They ain't the same order of
things.
Life turning out the way it turns out, isn't equivalent to fate or
destiny. What there is to wrestle with / come to grips with here, is
life turns out the way it turns out whether you equate it with fate
or destiny or not. That's the senior operating axiom here.
Neither fate nor destiny have anything to do with the way life turns
out. Life turning out the way it turns out, is
observably,
experientially what's happening. And fate and destiny are
arguably only intellectually, rationally happening. That's not an easy
get. But this is a
graduate
conversation, so getting it requires a new open-ness, and a
courageously new flexibility.
Regardless of what I do to have it turn out some way, life turns out
the way it turns out. Regardless of what I do to have it
not turn out some way, life still turns out the way it
turns out. And what I do or don't do, is also the way life turns
out. It flies
in the face
of everything we do and / or don't do to have life turn out the way we
want it to turn out. It flies
in the face
of the
belief
that we have the wherewithal to have life turn out the way we want it
to turn out. What does that say about the wherewithal we may have to
impact the way it turns out? Try this on for size: if we impact the way
it turns out, that's what turned out; if we don't impact the way it
turns out, that's what turned out. OK, what if it turns out the way we
want it to turn out? That's just co-incidence.
Almost inexplicably, this idea is empowering, freeing. Yet "It turns
out the way it turns out" sounds like the very antithesis of power and
freedom. How can this be? It's empowering and freeing because when we
get life turns out the way it turns out anyway, we have
freedom to be.
Remember (don't get ahead of me here): if we do something, that's
the way it turns out, and if we don't do anything, that's also the
way it turns out. When we recognize that it doesn't fit into our
categories that life turns out the way it turns out (no matter what we
do / don't do, no matter what we want / don't want), it's an
opportunity
to be fully present
to who we really are,
to be fully awake
to who we really are, to participate wholeheartedly in life,
present
and
awake
to who we really are.
But listen:
Werner
is asserting that life turning out the way it turns out "... doesn't
fit into our categories". So 'round about now is an
opportune moment to ask: just what (and where) are these
"categories" of ours, into which life turning out the way it turns out
(no matter what we do or don't do) doesn't fit?
Our categories are our worldviews, our life-views, our
epistemologies
through which we look at, assess, and judge everything. They're
fixed
points of view
which we've amassed and laid down, ways we've learned to survive / ways
we deploy ongoingly in order to survive whether they're warranted or
not. So if any ideas, even powerful
transformative
ones, don't fit into our categories, they're dismissed out of hand,
especially
gamechangers
like "Life turns out the way it turns out (no matter what we do or
don't do)" which counterintuitively allows us to
make a difference
... even if that doesn't fit into our categories.
