FootprintsintheWind.com

We are a curious race, ever seeking. A better humanity is an endless task, full of growing fascination. We will never arrive, and that is the point.

:- Doug.

What is a better humanity today? We complain of kids these days, and loss of cursive handwriting and other things from our days, the conflicts afoot in the world, and we do not think as much as we should of what is good and what might be better.

:- Doug.

When we address growing a better humanity, what is possible? What might be possible? What do we want to be possible?

:- Doug.

It is for the grandchildren, and their grandchildren: are they, the whole string, worth our caring, not knowing where we are going, making it up as we travel, giving up on outcomes?

:- Doug.

When you read, when you hear another, ask: What has this to do with humanity’s grandchildren, with our relationships with them?

:- Doug.

We are the generations: simultaneously grandchildren and ancestors. What lovingkindness do we owe the species-string?

:- Doug.

We’re here. Later generations come after. Is first come, first served the fairest attitude?

:- Doug.

How do we connect across a divide? We seek commonalities. We hear. How do we hear across time? Perhaps we tell stories and write letters as if.

:- Doug.

That perspective seems new to me; tell me more.

:- Doug.

We are as Moses: heading off, wandering, seeing but setting foot in the promised land only through our grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Gather our common caring
for our never-complete, always whole
humanity

:- Doug.

I am reading Peggy Holman in her Engaging Emergence: beyond what she is writing. She writes about organizations and communities getting things done now; I read about communities of generations caring for the qualities of humanity: humanicity.

:- Doug.

We don’t know, nor can we, what effect our stories will have. We only know the intentions with which we offer them. So our stories and intentions must be open to our hearers. Should we have any.

:- Doug.

O—our generation
H—the 11th generation
→ unexpectedly wet!

:- Doug.

How can the generations be a whole system—one entity, entire? We cannot know but we can hang together to see.

:- Doug.

Conversing across generations
not only you and one specific grandchild
also a spot along the way revealing vistas

:- Doug.

Not improving humanicity
we are together caring
for our common humanicity
accepting the complex waters between us
fishing out new and possible togetherings

:- Doug.

With our outreach, generations are no longer alone. Grandparents and grandchildren enfold, inspire one another. We craft a new narrative.

:- Doug.

Tell your dilemmas
and failures
failures are dilemmas
half way through
Tell society’s dilemmas
choices equally good
and painful
as if they were your own
most peculiar
is most universal
no results only eternal mid

:- Doug.

Story: a productive pregnant vantage point for the process of nudging the arc of humanicity.

:- Doug.

Look to the old stories, Gilgamesh for instance, and see what they have to teach us.

:- Doug.

Count your story’s verbs and nouns
one set looks ahead
one is dying

:- Doug.

Storytelling pushes us
outside of today

:- Doug.