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

Lucky Man

Valley Ford, California, USA

May 17, 2010
"If you have a friend on whom you think you can rely, you are a lucky man! If you've found the reason to live on and not to die, you are a lucky man!" ... Alan Price, O Lucky Man! soundtrack 
"The harder I practice, the luckier I get." ... Gary Player
This essay, Lucky Man, is the ninth in an open group with titles borrowed from Songs: I am indebted to my children Alexandra Lindsey Platt and Christian Laurence Platt and Joshua Nelson Platt and to Alan Watts who inspired this conversation.


I intend my children are intent on distinguishing what works  in Life. In this way, they'll be empowered doing whatever  they choose to do regardless of what they choose to do. There are many, many things my children have learned in their young lives. And now, as they approach the end of their high school years and their college graduation years, there's an unavoidable realization for me as I look at exactly what they learned from me, as distinct from what they learned from others and from Life itself, and it's this:

What they learned from me ie the values and wisdom that I, their father, uniquely imparted to them, they learned before they were five years old. That's all the time they gave me to lay down the core set. From then on, with regard to amassing their own beliefs and opinions, some of which will hold them in good stead and others of which will only serve as impediments until they undo  learning them, they were on their own with regard to determining Life for themselves.

So now, all I'm interested in supporting them distinguishing is what works as opposed to what doesn't work. For example, I intend when they see Life working for some people but not for others, I'll coach them it's not a matter of being lucky  which determines what works - "bad"  luck if things don't work, "good"  luck if they do. Rather it's a predictable result of distinguishing the quality of workability which they have the power to bring with them  to any situation and / or to any circumstance they may experience in Life.

From the Cambridge International Dictionary:

<quote>
Definition
lucky

adjective
having good things happen to you by chance
<unquote>

Call my children anything but please don't call them lucky. To me that's disparaging. Twice.

In the first instance, calling someone lucky completely discredits their authorship of any work they do carefully crafting a life, totally denies their intentionally generating a legacy worth leaving, and blatantly ignores their commitment to over and over and over  again standing in the possibility of what they could become  rather than settling for the comfort and familiarity of what they already are.

In the second instance, when you call me lucky, you don't let inspiration  or any new opening for action  into your life. On the other hand, if you view what I've crafted as Self  made, as inspiring, inspiring enough in fact to take it on for yourself in your own life, now that's  an acknowledgement. But if you view what I've crafted as simply a matter of luck, as random as the universe flipping a coin, it not only disparages me, it's worse than that: it keeps you stuck in a place where living powerfully isn't available on call  or at will  for everyone, but is rather only available to the "lucky" few on whom fate and / or the gods bequeath favor. If I get my job done as a father, my children will see clear through that oft foisted misguided perception of how Life works.

All that said, there's arguably one element of luck which is worth acknowledging, and that's being lucky enough to have the presence of Self  to continually generate Life as an ongoing creation. But as for being lucky enough  to have the presence of Self to continually generate Life as an ongoing creation so there's choice in the matter  of whether Life works or not, isn't this also  a Self generated ongoing creation? If so, doesn't this imply luck itself is an ongoing creation, Self  generated by the misconstrued so-called "lucky"  man, and is therefore not a matter of chance at all?

This particular inquiry has the power to transform Life, so I'll get out of the way now so you can look for yourself.


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