Werner Erhard and the jargon with which we spoke of him

I just returned from a short vacation with my ex-wife and children. The fact that my ex-wife and I can enjoy going on a vacation with our teenagers, and that all four of us enjoy each other's company, is unusual and wonderful.

There is no question in my mind that this would not be the case apart from the communication skills we developed and our ability to accept things as they are which we developed in the then-named est programs developed by Werner Erhard. There's absolutely no question. So I have undying appreciation and gratitude not only for Werner Erhard, but also for everyone else in the est/WE&A staff and the informal network of est graduates, especially people in the assisting program and participants in the graduate seminar programs.

This trip we just took included about four hours of driving in each direction. We shared with the kids as much as we could of our est experiences, and also gave them a crash course in early-198os est jargon:

"I want to acknowledge Werner Erhard for creating the space in which I can create the space that I can get that you feel bad that you were grumpy with your mother and I and I want you to know that I have the space for you to be where you are and I get that you are sorry and I want you to get that I absolutely forgive you and that I know that you know that I love you and I want you to get that I know that you love me."

Then I turned to my ex-wife, who was driving, and with wide eyes and a smile said, "Don't you just love Werner Erhard."

I had all of them laughing. I was kinda hoping I could get my ex-wife, who was almost crying, to wet her pants. (If she did, she didn't tell me.)

One of the challenges the enthusiasm of est graduates created for the work we were, and many of us still are, committed to, was that we did actually run around talking that way. It began to be addressed to some extent by the time I went my own way. But boy, did I (and others) turn a lot of people off.

The truth is that what the clichéd jargon represents are some deeply powerful truths.

My ex-wife and I have given each other "the space" to be who each other is. In other words, we have chosen to accept and value each other "as is." It turned out that it didn't work for us to love together. I'm much more consistently attracted to men than to women; being in a monogamous relationship with a woman was not something that I was able to make work for me, although that was my intention when we married. And I was totally open about my sexuality with her from the time we met. Being married to an increasingly-frustrated gay man did not work for her, nor did being in a sexually "open" marriage (which we did for a while).

Our decision to divorce was an act of love for each other, a freeing of each other.

In raising our children, my goal has been to offer them absolute acceptance and love, by accepting and loving them unconditionally. I've made a very clear distinction between my love for them and behaviors which I may or may not like. I used to say to them, "I love you when you have good behavior; I love you when you have bad behavior; I love you when you do what I want; I love you when you don't do what I want," etc.

So, to use the old jargon, I have "given them the space to be who they are."

And I have made it a practice to listen to and really hear whatever they have to say. I am aware, not only from Werner Erhard programs but from readings in humanistic psychology and elsewhere, that when I person feels truly heard it makes a difference. I don't try to talk my children, or others, into feeling different than they do. (Not that I don't screw up on this; when I discover I'm not listening in an accepting, validating way, I change modes, unless I'm in the midst of being emotionally upset myself.)

So I did give my son "the space" to express his feelings of guilt. My sense of the importance of that comes both from est programs and from humanistic psychology writings and trainings.

Acknowledging that he knows I love him, and that I know he loves me, well, that came straight from an Erhard aphorism booklet we got at the end of the training.

Jargon gets in the way. Jargon triggers feelings of exclusion among those who don't "own" the jargon. Jargon makes it appear to some that the users of the jargon have become part of something cult-like.