FootprintsintheWind.com

Does this politician appeal to your better side or your worse, your higher or your lower? How do you feel after listening? Angry? Uplifted? Loving?

:- Doug.

Allow the other person to be a person.

:- Doug.

We jump to be heard: we run over others’ words and thoughts. It would get us to a decision faster if we jumped to hear—and affirm—the other, before we spoke our mind. Faster, and we all hold it fast.

:- Doug.

My heart is often at war. I have the choice to drop more to silence. I can choose to teach hearing one another, starting by making efforts to hear others.

:- Doug.

Do I have war in my heart? This explains why I feel a fight in meetings. We probably all have this heart-war. So I must go further than controlling my silence; I must teach peace. Which may mean to teach hearing one another.

:- Doug.

Is my heart at war?
A longer view could release
The butterfly’s wings

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1610

“Right up to the last minute,”
Joelle said to me
“the soul has work to do”
Weeks later her words
lead me to ask
What if it were
more opening than disease
this Alzheimer’s
& these our tribe’s explorers?
What might they discover
learn & teach
these modern Magellans
freed of memory?
What is learning
if released from memories?
What is life?
Traveling unencumbered
by memory
how might they move?
Where go?
Maybe it’s we who
hold them back
with talk of yesterday
and this morning
and 5 minutes ago
& we their Sherpas
carrying their food
bedding & tent
while they attend
their ascents

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

You can be in control without controlling
Choose to give others their heads
Your heart holds back your hand

:- Doug.

When the edges of the curve start to meet, so do we:

:- Doug.

We have a quiet little law practice in elder caring: we provide powers of assistance, get court permission for you to act for your loved one, and find you help to pay for home and nursing care.

:- Doug.

Brain choices: A few hints that our brain is not functioning as before, and we worry these are signs of our impending dementia; each example gets us buying the notion we are slipping; we become depressed and don’t tell anyone; we become lazy and let others do for us; we write in terms of we and not I.

Or.

We can knead our brain, roll, stretch, move, shape, pat, and play with it, fitting it into new tasks and roles; encourage it to grow; store words and activities in new areas; prove its plasticity; allow the old to be fresh.

:- Doug.

Breathe. Let it go. Take a trip away in place.

:- Doug.

Safety is not the main thing in elder caring: love is.

:- Doug.

Does service to others foreclose your own optimized life course? Or, is it your optimized life course?

:- Doug.

How can I meet—meet—five truly different people each week?

:- Doug.

I am part of that part of the conversation emerging into consciousness.

:- Doug.

Conversation goes beyond empathy for another to explore for the chance to meet, to know one another. Each extends each others’ selves.

:- Doug.