FootprintsintheWind.com

Goals and purposes differ from each other more than walls from windows. Plans and processes differ even more.

Why? Purposes move; goals are fixed. Purposes are clear, lucid, see-through; goals are opaque, with invented pictures of what things can be like.

Goals have three difficulties: 1. The steps from here to there cannot be known at the start; 2. The end position cannot be known in all its effects, positive and negative; 3. The What’s next? question is left dangling. So we are left with a jerky, stop and start motion, and a need for head intervention.

1. Purposes specifically do not know the steps: the process (Do what’s most life-intensifying here, now) takes care of those. Each day, each time. 2. Purposes do not try to delimit any end position: just every step makes the whole ever better. 3. The What’s Next? is already known at every point in time: Intensify living. It is smooth as a pair of dancers, turning, seeing, gracefully back and forth, swaying to the rhythm.

:- Doug.

Adjust by eye. Every step.

:- Doug.

Our impatience contributes to our desires for goals: if we set it, they will come—faster. Yet it is a false speed: we can have our more important desires now—peace, love, life, God.

:- Doug.

When we first set a goal, it is hubris to think we know what the final result will be, how it will effect us and those round us, and where it will lead on. Far better a purpose upon which we keep circling and closing…& improving.

:- Doug.

Goals put blinders—in front of our eyes. We can only see the picture we painted on the blinders.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 983

Things I have learned from canoeing rivers:

The river does not care if you ride along or fall in.

The white water was a thrill—once you’ve past it. When you’re in it, it is terror.

Sometimes you think you see swift easy passage—only to find yourself lodged on the bottom in shallow water. The only thing to do is to get out and walk on the rocks. Better then if you brought shoes you can get wet.

Although you have a paddle, the river still flows where it wants.

Please pass it on.

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Always be living.

:- Doug.