Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More



Participation

St Mungo, Clifton Beach, Cape Town, South Africa

June 8, 1983



This essay, Participation, is the nineth in a group of twelve adapted from my thesis BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING:
  1. Keeping Your Word Means Making Happen What You Said Is Going To Happen
  2. Commitment And The Willingness To Have It All Work Out For Everyone
  3. Keeping Your Word Is A Black And White Issue
  4. Packing My Own Parachute
  5. Fear
  6. Commitment Creates The Space For Keeping Your Word To Happen
  7. Skydiving
  8. Workability
  9. Participation
  10. BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING
  11. Seeing Is Not Believing (Seeing Is Seeing And Believing Is Believing)
  12. Attention To Detail


What people really want to do in life is to participate. People really want their lives to matter, to make a difference.

Truly there is no answer for anyone who asks why people want to participate. People want to participate because they want to participate.

From within that tautology I see that in a very real sense we ARE participation. What we need to do is to rehabilitate that essential nature.

We want our participation to count. We want our lives to make a difference. We want to be known as people whose word can be counted on to the degree when if we say we are going to make something happen, then you can bet everything you own that it will happen.

It makes no sense at all that we should be that way, and that is the way we turn out to be.


This essay, Participation, recreates Observation 14: What We Need Is Something That Doesn't Make Any Sense At All of my thesis, BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING, which is available at

http://laurenceplatt.home.att.net/breakthrough

The essay BREAKTHROUGH SKYDIVING introduces the thesis.


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