FootprintsintheWind.com

I try to be conscious that it’s not I, Douglas Germann, working to nourish the conversation, but I as part of the conversation nurturing itself.

:- Doug.

Maybe we should not ask how we prepare the next generation for the new world coming: rather ask how we let them prepare us.

:- Doug.

How could we possibly see relationships and conversations as property? We breathe the air and recycle it back to the trees, they to us. We are in relationship to the trees. Our food a circle with sun, air, water, death, decay, growing, flowering: a conversation.

:- Doug.

We all who see the images on the news, are seeing ourselves. The future is in seeing, hearing. The hope is in seeing, hearing, reacting. Humanly.

:- Doug.

In the early 21st century we are discovering about 1.6 meters from the surface of the planet a nervous system. This nervous system shows us that we are more alike than different, that we are connected to one another, northern, southern, black, white, brown, red, yellow, old, young, heart and rhythm, scarlet of blood and flash of eyes.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1609

Thinking outside the box is repeated so much, it is now inside the box.

Please pass it on.

© c 2016, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

The issues for me revolve around birthing and touching, interweaving and opening. How do we open windows, doors, and skylights among us? How do we engender, quicken a more inclusive world? Who are the people who care about this, who see the wider?

:- Doug.

Words and concepts of my hope: inclusion, access, open, transparent, lateral, peer-to-peer, sharing, clear, urbane, responsible, participative, engender, touch, converse.

:- Doug.

A hope in things we have seen: distribution of conversation, flattening of the conversation, democratization. The Internet has brought about a change in how we think, how we interact. If, and it may be a big if, we can do the same in the power grid, if we can create power on our own homesteads, there is hope that the world can become even more distributed, flat, democratic.

:- Doug.

Engaging people is the task. Make an effort and find what works for me. Figuring it out ahead of time does not seem to be working: I try something, and it does not get me 100% to a deep conversation, and so I stop, feel like it is all a difficult task. Well, it is difficult. Every interaction is different, and so it takes being there.

:- Doug.

The top of the hill must be quite narrow: years you climb and climb, then suddenly you find yourself on the downhill.

:- Doug.

What’s invisible to you? (To me it is sports and popular singers and personalities.) What’s most visible to you?

:- Doug.

Not goals nor targets, but purposes will help us help clients with what they want to do now.

:- Doug.

“Communication is very important” writes one person. Rather, conversation is very important, key: not merely telling folks and going so far as to hear them.

:- Doug.

“Feeling rushed” is an example of how one person’s time thoughts are imposed upon another; often the two persons do not translate the same, which might have been intended by the imposer.

:- Doug.

Conversing is talking about something important: new ideas, fixing the broken, building the new, creating community, telling our pain. Chit-chatting, gritching, drawing lines between ourselves and the other are not conversing.

:- Doug.

The very act of conversing is the lever moving the world.

:- Doug.

Or am I just seeing my own thought come round the bend?

:- Doug.

This is significant: conversation is changing the world. The more we converse, the more distributed, lateral, and collaborative our picture of the world becomes. Our picture changes, our ways of engaging our world change.

:- Doug.

Time does not exist except in our heads. If you don’t agree with another on the meaning of time, you two can live in different times.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1608

For several months as I am approaching my 70th birthday I find that I am welcoming the badge “elder.” I am choosing to ask for help or to hire work done—lawn mowing for instance—though I still am able. I choose. Yesterday I did some light electrical work, today I’ll do some plumbing and yard work—engaging mind and large and small muscles. I enjoy good health, energy, and the motive to get good things done. There are positives to being an elder. Lengthening sight. Desire for the good of all humankind. Knowing every this passes, things get better, the best is found in loving engagement with our world.

Please pass it on.

© c 2016, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Conversation alive is an open system.

:- Doug.

What do the laws of thermodynamics—conservation of energy, constant entropy—say about conversation?

:- Doug.