How do you live in open space?

Lex McCafferty mccafferty at inwind.it
Thu Jan 20 13:57:54 PST 2005


Really, really, really nice question!

It has had me thinking for a few days, as well as avidly reading the other
posts which have been striking enough chords to keep a lot of guitars
strumming.

Here's one perspective which affected me today:

One of the things I do is teach English as a second-language. My pet
specialty is verb tenses. I have a way of showing students the entire tense
construct on one page as well as the process, i.e. the relation of tenses to
each other in time. But it isn't enough for the students to communicate in
English. Clever as I think my explanation might be, only the students
themselves can supply the meaning they want to communicate. The students
have to decide what they want to say and learn the words to say it through
the structure of grammar. The grammar by itself is nothing.

So, that's what living OS does for me on lots of levels. It helps me realise
just how responsible I need to be to be free of, free from, free to. In the
case above, free to express and communicate.

To say it another way. Lots of time and mental effort has been spent on
wondering "What's the meaning of life?" as if 'life' was a thing capable of
holding meaning on its own. Well, 'existence' is a fact, whereas 'life' is
in my opinion a construct or process and so the 'meaning' or 'purpose' or
'content' is really dependent on what the individual decides.

By itself, life is neutral. We are born, we live, and when it's over, it's
over. What happens after that I don't know, ... and I don't have to know to
give my life meaning. I can just decide the meaning of my life.

By itself, OS is neutral. But the 4 principles and the Law of Two Feet are
like a grammar to help me express the meaning I decide. And pretty much the
best one I've found yet.

Lex

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