Music and Fire
Age: Music and Fire
:- Doug.
We can be about transposing age into imagination and art.
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
You can see from here
What you can see from here
Can it be for the grandchildren
Of some good use?
:- Doug.
An additional generation
We have—we are—an additional generation. This widespread longevity and health presents us the opportunity to fashion elderhood for the good of generations.
:- Doug.
Shrinking and expanding
This shrinking and expanding is us. Our household is specific and local. Notice: it is and always is us and our.
:- Doug.
The role of affection
It is not about us receiving affection, but for the grandchildren finding and pointing up the role of affection.
:- Doug.
What lasts
The turning point is that as our orbit shrinks economically, it can expand foundationally, in what lasts. In choices. For the oncoming generations. For ourselves in deciding to help.
:- Doug.
Hidden in tiny things
There is something hidden in tiny things, seldom noticed: it flows. Perhaps it is affection. Perhaps generativity. It flows downhill.
:- Doug.
Weak with tiny orbit
In retirement, in old age, the charge of the corporation, nation, and economy is removed from us. We no longer make decision in millions or hundreds of thousands of Dollars and hundreds of jobs. In what ways then is this a culmination? Mark that it is.
As our concerns and powers reduce to human size, something barely noticed but real opens for us.
We are weak and small with a tiny orbit. We are also agents of generations.
In playing with the grandchildren, in baking cookies, in telling stories, knitting and praying, we are touching the lives of their grandchildren.
:- Doug.
Some paths
Help folks find the deeper paths: I have been on some of them; I may not be able to guide; but I can go with to opening.
:- Doug.
Land of whispers
Land of breath, wind, and whispers
you’ve opened to me a few of your courses
now I am able to accompany
:- Doug.
Not convincing
I need to remember that my task is not to convince people to become elders; more it is to find and encourage those who are, in whatever stage of their elderhood. Inkling, surprised, beginning, advanced: elders help elders.
:- Doug.
The age for making a difference
What does it mean to you to fulfill the role of elder? Does it scare you that people might look to you for wisdom? Is it on a pedestal too high? Does the idea lack concreteness? Do you feel left out since you have no grandchildren? Do you know there are as many ways to be elder as there are old people, maybe more? Do you feel the age for making a difference has passed you by? Are you beyond doing, leaning in toward being? Do you know that your years of experience can be of real value to the oncoming generations?
:- Doug.
Capturing thousands
This eldering won’t leave me alone. I am wrestling over whether it has truth and value. Truth in the sense that there are thousands of ways of being elders; value in the sense of how can we ever capture it all, make it make sense to people?
:- Doug.
