Undo the Undoing

I want you to do something for me. I want you to think about these ideas. I want you to feel these emotions. I want you to experience this tension of intention and harvest on the horizon. Indulge me...

Once there were some people who thought about things.
They thought about things like what the future might be like for their children.
They started important conversations like this one:





Their children also were thinkers.
They thought about what their future might be like, too.
They thought about things like this, though they didn't always say it out loud:

The people sang a beautiful melody with haunting words:

Yes there comes a booming sound
It used to come from underground
Now it emanates
From a kind of welfare state
Of the soul
Yeah baby of the soul

And of the sweet sweet soul
Let's be certain
Of the deliberate monologue
As sure as if it will fall
Across you
Unto you
Will most certainly leave the doing undone

Come on undone

And we are doing
And we are screwing
Up our lives today
What's that we chanted
It's this we planted
C'mon progeny
~"Up with People", by Lambchop

That's right,
They knew what they were doing.
They kept singing the same songs, however.

₪

Are you listening to the things the children aren't saying out loud...yet?
Are the children singing songs to themselves?
If you wrote your own lyrics, what story would your song tell?
What song is the Bush administration singing? (Answer.)
And if government officials fail to provide protection, doesn't that make them enemies of our collective future?

I am struck by the juxtaposition of these two conversations.
Or are they really two monologues?

Here's what I think...

Having the foresight to think about the future is worth a lot;
paying attention to what matters most is priceless.

And, of course, there is the little matter of aligning the doing with the thinking.

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P.S. Here is the original "Shift Happens You-Tube" (Pssst, SBT)

TAGS: Bush, Environment, Ecology, Global Warming, Demographic Shift, Shift Happens, Did you Know?, Greenpeace, Future of the Planet, Earth Activism, Intergenerational Conflict