FootprintsintheWind.com

There is an old saw, “It is better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Perhaps it would be good to turn that around: Far better to speak our doubts together so we can all grow, than to remain fools.

:- Doug.

Thought flows around us. I am caught in the central race of the waters. I am in love with this river called conversation. This intercourse is where we are real and alive. Conversation is essential to thinking: Conversation is to thinking as river is to flow. Each makes up the other.

:- Doug.

Some say Nothing happens until someone sells something. I tell you Everything happens when we risk our very selves to converse.

:- Doug.

I’m in the business of conversation. You are in the business of conversation. No, we are both alive only in the flowing surging waters of conversation.

:- Doug.

We must test out this thinking work. We must find differences and similarities and mis-perceptions. From these grow persons. What is this like? Where does this fit? How do we diverge and where do we meet? In the crevices the flowers grow. Who might we be? What flowers are we?

:- Doug.

We need to get out of ourselves and share this thinking work with others. We must grow it. We must grow our conscious awareness, we must see more of the real, we must create more of the real. We must kill off our pet projects, we must find more cliffs off which to jump—and more from which to turn back. We must find all of life.

:- Doug.

The higher joy of giving
The joy of sacrifice
This is real

:- Doug.

When we rely solely on experts, by definition we get limiting answers. Experts focus. They look at this and little of that and nothing of this over here. Lay people look little into this, lots at that, and a great deal at this over here. Experts and lay people need each other: neither one has a whole picture. The more people, the wider the panorama. The more conversing, the better our information, grasp and implementation. The more conversing, the bigger our dreams. Don’t chase the workers off: invite them to the harvest. It is vital we get more people conversing.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 673

Conversation is a turning-point. It is chilling. We shudder. We find ideas we had not wanted to see before. We learn more of what is real. We hash out ideas, kill pet projects, separate the crazy maybe later from the crazy it might just work. We decide to jump off a cliff. Or we decide to walk away from what might have been. If we are to make something happen, only here we decide.

Please pass it on.

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Conversation is about moving beyond thinking. We become aware of things we have not grasped before, even things we cannot grasp. Its social nature draws me outside my orbit. Conversation invites my awareness. Conversation expands us. When we are conscious of more we do more.

:- Doug.

Since conversation is thinking together, it is labor, we seek ways to avoid it. Simultaneously it hints at the essence of us, so with our fear we are fascinated: we do it all our days. We are in fact drawn to it and to one another. I want to find out what is in this other, between us, and therefore within me. We know we are more than we have thus far come. Thinking is a social act. When we think, we touch the world. We touch others who think; we touch those who do not think as we do: trees and fish, turtles and turkeys. What is it about thinking that can make muscles move?

:- Doug.

Conversation is labor. It is the work of thinking and bringing forth. Oft do we run to avoid it.

:- Doug.

All merges at the open end.

:- Doug.

These are parts of joining: the individual, the group, the universal. It is here, the universal, that we find true being.

:- Doug.

These are not Its. These are lives. They are participating in life. They are participating in my life.

:- Doug.

Can we be convivial—can we share life?

:- Doug.