FootprintsintheWind.com

Modern Magellans show us one road of the withdrawing elder.

:- Doug.

Life changes things.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1803

How do we as a nation move from anger to kindness?

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Despite physical and mental decline, elders can still teach us what matters.

:- Doug.

We’re not about increasing respect of elders, rather creating a world more hospitable for the grandchildren. Melodies and harmonies, many and varied instruments, dreams and epiphanies, hear and make the music.

:- Doug.

What do we do to bring up elders’ level in society? Many people have not thought about this, so to spring this question of someone unprepared, unawares, is unfair. I need to give some ground on which to start the exploration.

:- Doug.

Must mental incompetence or physical dependence be the end of a human’s value?

:- Doug.

Generativity is an experiment; if it fails, it has still advanced the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Feed your growth with reading, meditation, contemplation, art, meeting grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Maybe elders are like Jubilee: a wonderful idea never adequately given a go.

:- Doug.

Give the elders names of respect, names not to have but to carry, names to which to add honor, names to later bestow on others.

:- Doug.

Might eldering, by keeping one contributing, especially contributing at higher levels, fend off crotchetiness and decrepancy?

:- Doug.

Maybe elders never were; it is time; we are the ones.

:- Doug.

Seems elders will have to be the ones to prime the thinking about building that future. First, what ought that future look like; second, how do we build it in? On the first question, if we use the outline Grow, See, Play, what does that mean the future could be, ought to be? The future is a matter of spirit-playfulness. Once we ask ought, we need to ask is it possible; then is it practical? Just what does practical mean in the face of it is absolutely necessary?

:- Doug.

Deeper, we need it to be about building the preferred future into the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

In what ways are you growing? In what ways does the world look differently to you from how it did a few years ago?

:- Doug.

We think we have limited choices: we are wrong.

:- Doug.

This is the lever long enough: What sort of humanity do you choose?

:- Doug.

Now that we’ve learned to keep on growing, to see bigger, and to play, we need to apply these things to the question: What sort of humanity will we choose?

:- Doug.

Eldering is in large portion a task of imagining. Imagining yourself into the grandchildren’s world, imagining a future discontinuous with the present culture.

:- Doug.

There are today few elders because we do not choose; few choose because we do not imagine.

:- Doug.

Past adult we need a different measuring stick. For instance, speed, ability to move fingers or juggle numbers, eyesight have no place. Insight to a larger world, spiritual unfolding, and mediating between numinous and mundane are examples of eldering. Measuring itself is inappropriate for elder.

:- Doug.

Elder is a step past adult.

:- Doug.