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
The Life You Have
Rock And Roll Hall Of
Fame
And Museum, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
February 10, 2010
"It's not having what you want - it's wanting what you've got."
... Sheryl Crow
This essay,
The Life You Have,
was written at the same time as
A Matter Of Trust.
The life you have. You learned a lot in high school, but you didn't
learn this in high school.
Taking exception with Paul Simon's "When I think back on all the
crap I learned in high school ...", what I learned in high
school wasn't crap. What I learned in high school is what I learned
in high school.
What I learned in high school prepared me for Life. At the same time
paradoxically
what I didn't learn in high school is I'm
already prepared for Life. What I learned in high school
(the three Rs:reading, 'riting, and
'rithmetic) prepared me for getting along in Life.
What I didn't learn in high school is what prepares a person for
being in Life. The distinction is both subtle and
profound.
We're not taught being in life in high school. We're not even raised
this way ie we're not even raised as if there's a
distinction between getting along in life, and being in life.
Our entire culture is built in ignorance of and possibly even around
violating the premise of this distinction.
As it turns out, the life you have is by itself ie is by its
Self enough for being. As it turns out, the life you have is
awesome, complete, full, joyous, satisfied, and whole. Stop lying about
it. Nothing needs to be added to the life you have. Nor does anything
need to be taken away from the life you have. Nothing about the life
you have needs to be fixed or changed either. There's no secret
formula. There's no secret recipe. There's ... no ... secret.
Period.
Getting that is the hard part, given what you didn't learn in high
school.
The life you have: it's the only life you've ever had; it's the only
life you'll ever have. You'll never have another life other than the
life you have. And if you don't like the life you have and you're
hoping for reincarnation so you can come back in another better life,
then when you come back in another life, you won't like that one
either.
It's mind-numbing,
stoopifying
in fact, when you pause to consider how much you know to be
true about Life, completely avoids the simplicity and the
profundity of this plain fact. Everything you know, all your
tactics, all your strategies, all your schemes, all your strong
suits, all your defenses, all your survival mechanisms are at some
level or other fundamentally at odds with the fact that this is the
life you have, and
there's nothing you need to
do.
for it to be awesome, complete, full, joyous, satisfied, and whole
other than be here (which you are anyway) and live it.
Werner
Erhard
points out Life, after all, is a game in which what is not
is more important than what is. What you learned in high school
is completely in alignment with this. In fact it prepares you for this.
In a nutshell, what you learned in high school is appropriately how
to be what you're not. What you learned in high school is about the
life you don't yet have. What you didn't learn in high school is
about the life you have.
Aligning yourself with the life you don't yet have is called getting
along. Getting along isn't awesome, complete, full, joyous,
satisfied, and whole when it's rooted in tactics, strategies, schemes,
strong suits, defenses, and survival mechanisms. It is when it's
grounded in being. Also,
be awake
to you don't yet have the life you don't yet have. Ask a hamster
on a wheel what that's like.
Aligning yourself completely with the life you have ie buying up all
the stock in your own company (as Paul McCartney may have
said) is an authentic, powerful possibility. You didn't learn this in
high school.
This is it! This is the life you have. It's already turned
out, and this is exactly what the life you have should
experience like, feel like, look like, smell like, sound like, and
taste like when it's turned out.