FootprintsintheWind.com

We’re on a search to find better ways to human. And we are enlisting the grandchildren—of the 11th generation.

:- Doug.

Does it feel good to be in your skin? Has it gotten better as the years went on?

:- Doug.

Try this experiment: walk, look at entrances: which feel good, which bad? And what is the tension those entrances step through, mediate?

:- Doug.

Once, the ancient man and his adventurous grandson made a game, looking all through the yard and woods behind for critters to study. They laughed and made so much noise and fun, that soon the boy’s mother, the man’s daughter, came to see what it was all about. She joined in the fun and crawling around, getting the knees of her favorite white pants full of mud. “I’ll never get that out,” she said. That night they all three had dreams about the mud and using the sap from several trees in the woods to get out the stain. For weeks they mixed saps and ideas and finally found a combination that worked on all manner of stains. Mother found a way to make big batches, grandfather devised a marketing plan, grandson sold many many bottles of the stuff, and they lived happily together.

:- Doug.

Blame it on sex: without sexual reproduction, there would be much less meeting, much less creativity, many fewer mistakes, much less learning.

:- Doug.

The quality of the meeting is the quality of the act of human.

:- Doug.

To human is to converse is to meet. I have not found anything more of our essence.

:- Doug.

Human as verb is not affectation; it is core truth. We are not if we meet not.

:- Doug.

Conversation serves because it is a genetic process. We are not going to construct or assemble this conversation, but grow it.

:- Doug.

By deep, we often mean organic, alive, heartfelt, pure, of the full stuff.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2080

Our coming elders are an army of fireflies—spreading out all over the earth—rarely seen except in the dark, providing inspiration only when we look for them, doing work unknown to us.

Please pass it on.

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Ear is a good place to start—it signifies hearing.

:- Doug.

I’m trying to get through to people that. . . tomorrow’s grandchildren are important, we should think of them, and hear them.

:- Doug.

So what? How then shall we live?

:- Doug.

Exactly 300 years newer than you: meet this person alive.

:- Doug.

What do we gain from the continual passing away of things and people? What do gain from what we add to it?

:- Doug.

Can we get better at our species?

:- Doug.

We work to help better ideas pass into the souls of others—and get reflected back in new colors.

:- Doug.

Don’t say it all—barely enough to raise curiosity.

:- Doug.

Part of why we cannot speak our minds and hearts to the 300-year grandchild elders is we have no words that fit. Part is because we are afraid to say it. If we admit the first we can make up stand-in words, like X and qwoan. If we are afraid, we can say it in writing to a non-existent person and then burn what we wrote.

:- Doug.

Nibble: can we get longer at cross generational conversation?

:- Doug.

Nibble by nibble learn.

:- Doug.

Not a breakthrough we seek but a gentle dawning.

:- Doug.