FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2017

Perhaps, just perhaps
as we age
as abilities leave us
as people leave us
some of us could uncover
the meat of us
perhaps, just perhaps
our purpose is to
unlearn
to become hairless
exposed animals
we are at base
perhaps, just perhaps

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© c 2021, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Do what you love—whatever it is, it will inspire grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Come live in the Long Now and Big Hear.

:- Doug.

Hope is invalid when it does not generate work.

:- Doug.

Are you the acting we think makes the play?

:- Doug.

Do what good we can, have eyes on the grandchildren, all the while knowing we are in the middle act of a tragedy, or at all events, an epic with an ending. We may even be close enough to catch hints of the possible end of the thread.

:- Doug.

How to not be uptight about humanity’s future.

:- Doug.

Think beyond the future of humanity.

:- Doug.

Can we approach the possible end of humanity with equanimity, able to say “That’s the way of species: eventually they die away?” If we can, then we can see us fairly. Then our work is far larger than a better humanity.

:- Doug.

Paradox
this being human
a joy and pain
gone
when humans are no more

:- Doug.

Think about the future for the benefit of the future.

:- Doug.

We’re all grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2016

No production, please. Let the world turn without you today. Bending the arc perhaps, or just adding the weight of a smile to it.

Please pass it on.

© c 2021, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

How ought we make our world-bed in which our grandchildren will awaken?

:- Doug.

If you want to go deeper
just how shallow have you been?

:- Doug.

Not broken but ever foggy—your crystal ball. Proceed. It’s your reasonable choice.

:- Doug.

What do we not want to give the eleventh generation?

:- Doug.

A Trip Deep Into the Future

:- Doug.

If in our Wills we leave the gift of money we leave only dregs of life. Ought we leave what is real?

:- Doug.

We can meet our generations perhaps through common threads—faith, place, culture, country. We can explore these in journals, writing, reverie, and meetings with today’s elders.

:- Doug.

Converse with generations by leaving them a gift. What gift would last? What gift would speak?

:- Doug.

When up against nothing more to say, that is the signal to turn my curiosity around, to see where it came from, what is next, what it might mean to others and to me, to go deeper and feeling my way for more scents and sounds, aromas and feather-touches, emotions and sights, temperatures and colors, movements and balance, awarenesses and life-senses. There is more, ever.

:- Doug.

My thinking of 300 years and 11 generations is perhaps not only a piker, but somewhat limiting: I am only thinking of people as I know the species, or persons. I am thinking of intelligence mostly in terms of words and verbalizing. Even now there are plans afoot to communicate directly without going across lips and ears.

My thinking has been that communication, especially conversation, is of the essence of persons. Is that necessarily so? And are persons necessary? Can our essences be like perfume essences, wafting on the breezes? What would it mean to be that sort of entity?

:- Doug.