FootprintsintheWind.com

What have you given the world?

:- Doug.

At 16, adolescence
at 66, essence

:- Doug.

Can we grow, old? That is to say, while older we become, to grow, daily? Older still, daily grow. Growth is the essence of living, perhaps?

:- Doug.

Maybe it’s not so much age sneaks up on us, or we think we’re not that old, it’s also we know how to do that and we haven’t yet figured out we shouldn’t. Another example of straight line thinking: the trajectory of our skills will always keep rising as it has during our adult years.

:- Doug.

What hope do you do?

:- Doug.

See: old means different things: it means the first grey hairs, it means severe debility. We feel old, we feel young. It is about how we look, how we feel, our energy, our health, our attitude, our spirit, our outlook, our stance toward the generations. We are asked: whom will we be, what will we do, how will we pass along life?

:- Doug.

Not only do we get an extra 30 years: we are no longer old at 55.

:- Doug.

We are a new generation, the 4th generation. We have a new place in the world, a new role, and we can guide for the good of the species.

:- Doug.

We are the new fourth generation.

:- Doug.

Elder us to open to
the heart of the matter

:- Doug.

Elder years offer new callings of old people.

:- Doug.

Old age might be exiled in strange lands—or it could offer a fresh and long view to those rushing they know not where.

:- Doug.

In our younger elder years, we ought open our eyes to our beginning elder status. We can then work out what eldering means.

:- Doug.

Reading in Simone De Beauvoir’s Coming of Age today. It seems that old age was almost always a matter of economics: the useless mouth did not get fed. It was resented. When the older person was able to retain ownership (ownership is a new concept in the long sweep of history), then he (usually, he) was able to guarantee his food supply, and good treatment. But if not, the older person was killed or neglected to death.

But now we have the ability, in our affluence especially, to convert our long view to value for the generations. We are useful mouths/heads/dreams/spirits.

:- Doug.

Anything you can write about old age, the opposite on the color wheel is also true; and all the other hues.

:- Doug.

The soul may be relation: between body and wind; among living beings. Now we do soul; are in soul; we grow in soul with. Can we see we share soul?

:- Doug.

Hold not O elder
Give with open hand
Dream the big dream
Imagine for us pull us
Toward highest and best

:- Doug.

We are the world’s first elder generation.

:- Doug.

We cannot control the world, at our age. We now know that we never could, nobody can. We ever only can guide.

:- Doug.

Will we ever get to leaven?

:- Doug.

Enjoy your clouds and dark: the world needs blankets and rest.

:- Doug.

Instead of holding someone in the light, we might receive their light, opening a flow.

:- Doug.

Pick one turning point of your life and tell us the story of that still place upon which it turned.

:- Doug.