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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1762

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1762

Begin with the end of your mind.

Please pass it on.

© c 2018, 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

Even the most hard-nosed dream.

:- Doug.

Here we do something special.

:- Doug.

Waves may be energy, the particle-wave dance a way of expressing the movement between object and energy. Vibrate!

:- Doug.

Is there a waxing and waning of these phases? Mindell seems to have in mind a wheel that keeps rolling. Perhaps the wheel can roll both directions?

:- Doug.

There follows decrepitude. Not all experience it. Some perhaps even seek it after other parts of their lives. It might be short, or it might last years. Might it include some spiritual dimensions?

:- Doug.

May your decrepancy….

:- Doug.

Child, adult, middler, elder can map to Mindell’s phases: 1. me-me-me; 2. not-me problems to solve; 3. starting to see both sides, role-playing, dreaming; 4. higher-larger-infinity-eternity-whole-generativity.

:- Doug.

The use of games in the course room facilitates random juxtaposition of our ideas…and selves.

:- Doug.

Elders are simultaneously within and outside the system. So they can see you bigger, help the grandchildren make a bigger world.

:- Doug.

The hardware store sells me a quarter inch drill. Do they sell me quarter inch holes? No. The doctor, the lawyer, the preacher provide me a service. Do they sell me a result? No. They each provide what they provide. Life is without guarantees and results are seldom seen in the instant, nor dependent solely on the provider.

:- Doug.

Peace and getting along is not the final stage of human relations, only a stopping place along the way. It may be the attractor to where most of us want to be, and indeed it (or states near it) may be where we spend the most time. Eventually, we will cycle into conflict, truce, spirit, and back to self-centric thinking. It, Thou, Us, Poetry, Making, It…. We go round.

:- Doug.

The elder view is the long view.

:- Doug.

Friend, into your generations.

:- Doug.

“Laden with happiness and tears.” Are tears more profound, more together-bringing than happiness? Or just a form of happiness? Either can carry us along the generational stream.

:- Doug.

My father in law used to say, “Retired people are easy to talk with. They have nothing to prove.” I don’t believe it—it’s not retired folks. It is elders. Of any age. People who have nothing to prove: who have a longer view.

:- Doug.

What is the message of the film for you?

:- Doug.

To teach wisdom, teach the living of “I don’t know.”

:- Doug.

Finally, wisdom is saying I don’t know. If you deny being wise, you probably are on your way.

:- Doug.

Wisdom is in the questioning.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1761

This chill winter day a little woodpecker is climbing the maple tree, tapping at it. A cardinal flies off quickly to another tree. You live here all year, this is home. The robins and others migrate away in colder weather. An elder in a nursing home communes silently with the bird visiting the feeders outside his window. What do they share in their unspoken language? Than the worlds we think we live in daily, there may be more subtle.

Please pass it on.

© c 2018, 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

How do I bring the depth of for the grandchildren into end of life conversing?

:- Doug.

The purpose is not peace nor even holiness. It is wholeness, completeness: peace and violence, song and vitriol and withdrawal and ennui and

:- Doug.