One of the things I find most interesting about human nature is our ambivalent relationship with predictability. Do we want our lives to be predictable? Some people would say yes, some would say no, and many would say we want it to be predictable in some ways and not others. The Landmark Forum makes a case for the unpredictable, saying that breakthrough results and performance are only available in the world of the unpredictable.
I think this perhaps reflects a source of tension people find around Landmark Education and their programmes – they become interested, but they are nervous about their sense that taking the Landmark Forum might turn their lives upside down! And this is often the case, not because the Landmark Forum ‘does something’ to people, but it allows them to see that the predictability of life is actually their own creation, and that they could take it in entirely different directions if they so chose. Having the option to get completely out of your cozy routine can be disconcerting.
I summarize the internal conflict this way: the mind craves predictability. In fact, it wants this certainty far more than it wants happiness and fulfillment. With certainty and predictability the mind can strategize how to get through life, even it’s not fulfilling, if we survive, that’s for the mind. The mind is about survival, and if it sees a predictable path for survival, that’s enough for it, regardless of whether it’s particularly gratifying.
Our higher selves, one could say, don’t really care about predictability. Our higher selves want to learn and grown and flourish. Predictability actually tends to be a barrier to these things. This creates a natural tension in people. You can see it when someone comtemplates a serious life change sometimes – a new career, going to school, marriagen/divorce – the current circumstance can be miserable, but people are still loathe to change the routine – they are caught in between their desires for predicatability on hand and their desire for growth and happiness on the other.
None of this is to say that predictability is inherently bad or unpredictability inherently good – in fact, in the realm of survival, quite the reverse it true, in the sense that predictability is quite a good thing for an aeroplane engine or finding one’s auto keys.
But for me, after having done the Landmark Forum, nothing could quite beat the experience of life as an adventure, desiring to meet new people because I didn’t know what they were like – it was certainly more gratifying than night after night in front of the television! In this way, unpredictability has been a good thing for me. If you read reviews of the Landmark Forum, I’ll bet good money that you’ll notice a trend – those saying positive things about it are talking about the excitement of unpredictable experiences, while those criticising it are operating on the precept that unpredictability is a bad thing. Until next time…
