FootprintsintheWind.com

Who’s better at puzzles: children, adults, elders? Elders are themselves a puzzle: their very existence asks What now? More tellingly, What next?

:- Doug.

We have added 30 years; we have scattered our adult children: to whom will we contribute and what?

:- Doug.

We were hunter-gatherers following the seasons and food. So we left behind those too sick and weak to keep up. We became farmers, had much food and shelter. So we took care for these. Now we are mobile, scattered. So…what?

:- Doug.

To wish to not be a burden on your children is at root selfish. For will you be abandoned if you are too much burden? Yet your son’s soul goes out to you and your daughter needs to mother you. Your selfishness denies them their hearts.

:- Doug.

Hunter-gatherers lose their elders when they can no longer keep up with the moving band. Agrarian communities gain elders by staying put. They have supplies of food and existing shelter, so longevity is allowed extension. Now our families scatter on the four winds; will we again leave our elders behind? It falls to us to make these years most valuable For the Grandchildren.

:- Doug.

If the body is healthy, the soul is expanding, and we have an extra 30 years, who then?

:- Doug.

Eldering might never have bloomed—yet. With our rapidly expanding life spans, we are now given an opening and necessity to invent our role.

:- Doug.

Let us learn ways
to wrap stories in stories
to sneak lessons deep inside lessons

:- Doug.

Caring for one another is what defines us as humans, what opens up our worlds.

:- Doug.

The term “older adult” is a misunderstanding if not an ill considered epithet.

:- Doug.

Grandparenting means helping the cosmos grow.

:- Doug.

Most are given age; what will we do with it?

:- Doug.

We have youngsters; what if we had oldsters? What would they be to the rest of us, how would they act? Would they be mates of the youngsters, sharers of play? How would they relate with the elders? What other sorts and roles of the chronologically advanced would we see if we’d look?

:- Doug.

In What Are Old People For? Bill Thomas observes that the pre-frontal cortex (he says the locus of the monkey mind) shrinks and so he speculates that we grow ever more capable of deeper forms of meditation and contemplation. This shows the science to what the poem “Modern Magellans” starts unfolding.

:- Doug.

Reading in Bill Thomas’s In the Arms of Elders, I was struck by his observation that the most infirm among us teach us the most important thing: community. They teach us caring.

This is an important leaping off place. There ought to be more, methinks: for one, this is a passive, non-purposive approach. It opens the door for sure. Those who have difficulty walking, talking, and thinking, are yet praying for the rest of us, holding us and all there is in light. How to be purposive in this light?

:- Doug.

Do not fear
Old age is near!

:- Doug.

:- Doug.

Acquisitiveness ensnares, confines. Even in relationships. Curiosity, exploring, playing free us to us.

:- Doug.

Elders have a decreasing desire to give advice.

:- Doug.

What is the gravamen of our culture? Is it youth? Money? Kindness?

:- Doug.

Eldering requires cooperation.

:- Doug.

What are loneliness, helplessness, and boredom for?

:- Doug.

What we have to teach
we have to discover
backwards of the teaching

:- Doug.