FootprintsintheWind.com

Will humanity be recognizable in 300 years? Perhaps not physically, but in their quandaries, yes.

In that sense, there is no urgency. In the sense that what we are doing today is a pebble in the pond, we have choices: where to throw the pebble, when, and which pebble, and what to do with the ripples coming to us?

:- Doug.

To grow and to nudge: to grow the growth of humanity, of myself to some extent, to get intentional about growing humanity. To nudge that along. Wholly ancestoring: to become better at being an ancestor for the good of humanity.

:- Doug.

What vocabulary do the ancestors have that we lack? What vocabulary can we create with them?

:- Doug.

Wholly Ancestors

:- Doug.

What is my Why is also a “marketing” question: How do I explain myself and my work to others? How do I engage them in the conversation? Perhaps I am trying to put too hard an effect or edge on it. Perhaps it is about improving myself (no, too small), or nudging the world (is it too vague to draw others?).

:- Doug.

What is my Why?

Why do I feel the strong pull to get to this work? When I started this quest toward the 300-year grandchild elders, it was with the aim of improving humanicity. The problem with defining “improving” in a way that leaves room for the 300-year grandchild elders to grow in the vectors they choose meant that the definition could not be made: to put a fence around is not possible, nor would it work. Nor would it be helpful, in all likelihood.

So I have in stages come to the point of influencing the growth and flow of humanity, and now mutual influencing. Back to conversation!

Which is surprising to me, I surmise, from the exclamation mark.

So what now is my Why? Does it really need to be static? Should our growth itself grow? How can a conversation across 300 years grow humanity? Or at least both participants?

What can we expect from our efforts to grow humanity? Perhaps they are a nudge that does not move the whole—or is that even possible? Does not a pebble tossed into the sea next to a mammoth ship move the ship in some immeasurable respect? Does not the moon pull the tides on earth?

Expectation is not the point. The point is to engage and to discover and invent what growth may be.

So my Why now? To grow, and to nudge.

:- Doug.

In our times, people speak often of balancing things in their lives. This is perhaps an outgrowth of ancient Greek thinking in dichotomies. There is also the more expansive view of a whole, a completing, a ball. Today I saw also a baking image: we do not balance water and flour, but combine them into one thing. Beyond that, it is not only flour and water, but salt, sugar, egg, kneading, and leaven that makes it into the whole.

Now deeper in: it is making these into something they were not before as separate items: something tasty, attractive, filling, nourishing, the beginnings of body and language and symphonies!

:- Doug.

Why is this work overarchingly important?

Perhaps it is overarchingly important only to me, but then no work is overarchingly important to all or to a majority. So I tell my story, sing my song, invite whomever is willing to join.

:- Doug.

Give them a home
and a welcome

:- Doug.

The History of Your Life as an Ancestor

:- Doug.

I’m a poet in process
of entering the stream
of the ancestors

:- Doug.

We will be lost along the way
Blind
Trust the compass

:- Doug.

Do you suppose it possible to learn from those 11 generations off? To learn as humanity? To care for them? To learn with them?

:- Doug.

What do you not have enough time to do?

:- Doug.

What could be the “However” of your life—you are known as X, however. . . ?

:- Doug.

There’s something coming at us, something we’re also headed toward. Bam! Ought we not look, think, and talk?

:- Doug.

Could we be soul-mates across generations?

:- Doug.

Can we know them?
Can we influence them?
Can we know them enough to influence?

:- Doug.

Influencing grandchildren influencing us.

:- Doug.

In the name of light and air, rain and breeze, heat and soil, nitrogen and worms, waters, juices and flows, manure and life impulse: Grow! Explore! Spread!

:- Doug.

About starting a stranger-conversation: be curious. Invite exploration. Influence thoughts toward the generations to come. Speak up when people say ageist, generationist things. Seek the higher.

:- Doug.

Give people an action, a something to do. Write? Reflect? Write a letter, create a dance, or a movie. Speak out for the generations, speak out to the generations. Find the urgency and give something to do to respond.

:- Doug.

Give an action.

:- Doug.