Merely goals
Goals are merely goals. They carry danger when they become musts, as in “You must have goals.” The danger is they could substitute for life: goals are defined by ends; life grows on.
:- Doug.
Goals are merely goals. They carry danger when they become musts, as in “You must have goals.” The danger is they could substitute for life: goals are defined by ends; life grows on.
:- Doug.
Is it possible for us in this society “that we need no longer aim at anything,” as Bernie DeKoven holds up for us in The Well-Played Game?
:- Doug.
Conversation works because the persons are more important than the subject of the conversation. Perhaps we can say that the object of the conversation is the betweens of it, the subject being the excuse to create the betweens.
:- Doug.
This is our opening.
:- Doug.
The All There Is
Is the Really Real
:- Doug.
Enjoy how we fit with life
We fit with life
By engaging in life
:- Doug.
If at the start you have to ask what a service will cost, maybe I cannot afford you as a client. Maybe you are so hung up on money that you will be blinded to doing what you need. That could tie my hands—and yours.
:- Doug.
Can we be present to The All There Is?
Merge with This?
Allow This to flow through us?
Us to flow through This?
Can we be All There Is?
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1244
Our conversational work is 1. exchange of information; 2. exchange of fellow-feeling; 3. inventing responses; 4. inventing who-we-are-together; 5. inventing our very selves.
What I am trying to say goes beyond whatever we pay attention to, whatever we inquire into, grows. It is not simply a variation on what was already there, and stop. It is potentially something entirely new under the sun. It is making way for something to emerge. It is making room for the unexpected. It is increasing capacity. It is creating new capacity.
Please pass it on.
© c 2012, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
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Have you ever seen a neighborhood baseball game, where the kids are different ages, different abilities, different sizes, but they still want to play? Here, this tree will be home plate, that tree across the way second base, and we’ll put this stick as first base and that pile of stones will be third. Now for four year old Suzie we’ll stand up closer and pitch underhanded to her, and she can use this closer places as her bases. They pick teams, and they have fun.
They have reinvented the game of baseball, to fit them, to serve them.
So many times we take the “solutions” (who wants to be dissolved?) of the “experts,” who are nothing but passers-by, and apply them to ourselves. Sometimes, perhaps more times than we realize, we need to reinvent our wheel.
:- Doug.
In our activist world, where every one of us is a doer, to take a moment out to contemplate is profoundly disorganizing.
:- Doug.
Don’t count on the Veteran’s Administration or even Medicaid for all your Long-Term Care. You still need love: a kind touch, a cold wash cloth.
:- Doug.
In a luscious dream, she does not want to awaken, want to stay in the impossible story. We can awaken her jarringly, but the world is more apt to arise willingly, brightly, looking forward to the day, if we are gentle and kind.
:- Doug.
Red giants
blast furnaces
created hydrogen
since then
morphing as
stars, planets,
great grandparents,
dust, us,
great grandchildren:
forgotten generations
will our
generation remember?
:- Doug.
Can we let die—
What
Whom
—When?
:- Doug.
Are we moving within a boundary or toward horizons?
:- Doug.
Disorganizing is not disorder.
:- Doug.
Given this—Dad’s dementia or Mom’s decline—how can we fit together, now? What are our special gifts, needs, fears and visions, and what’s possible with us?
:- Doug.
Life is not simply a question
of being here now
Nor accepting
the here and now
But also of being appreciative
of how we fit into here & now
:- Doug.
Something begins
Something fits
:- Doug.
I will always win
because what I want is life,
and life always plays along
:- Doug.
Yesterday I saw a writing which suggested that wanting to die at home is looking at things through rose colored glasses, that many families are overwhelmed with caring for someone at home and prefer in the end to have the help of a hospital or other institution. Yet it seems to me the question is more nuanced even than that. It depends on the pictures people hold in their heads. What does dying look like? What do we want it to look like now, for this person we love? What is the role of technology, and for how long? Specifically, do we need beeping machines and computer monitors, wires and tubes to care for this loved one, or are blankets and wash cloths and hugs more important? Is quiet better than machines at whole-making? Are we afraid to touch? Are we afraid to see? Do we see our own mortality, or do we choose to see someone who needs our loving, someone who is loving us?
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1243
Live as if you are on vacation: Do what you enjoy. Have days not months, not years. Be friendly with everyone. Every this does not matter. Help someone have a better day.
Please pass it on.
© c 2012, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com