Grandparents Co-Creating the Well-Living Community

The world is moving in more ways than you probably are aware. Your future is unpredictable and perplexing especially as a Grandparent.

There is complexity, fragmentation, and conflict. Among enterprises and charities competition is fierce and there are concerns about return on investments, time, efficiency, unserved customers, ecological damage, and the waste of scarce resources.

Fear, distrust, cynicism, resignation, and alienation are the fallout of this unprecedented flux. There is confusion about what to do, how to handle the ever-increasing uncertainty. What’s breaking down, what’s missing?

People who consider themselves to be responsible for the future, in whatever capacity as decision-makers — general managers, heads of the family, politicians, cocreators, architects, or scientists — are finding that their sense of control and accountability is being undermined.

What do they want? No matter what their circumstances, they do the best they can, try to make the correct decisions, and hope their leadership will have a meaningful impact. They want to make a difference, grow, be recognized, and feel appreciated.

As decision-makers, they used to know what they know. They even knew aspects of what they did not know. In today’s world, they now find that they do not know what they do not know. This perspective is a new and unfamiliar box to be in and it’s uncomfortable and disquieting.

Into this mix, you are grandparenting! You are guiding your grandchildren in their well-being and well-living. And so, here is something to consider.

Foreground NOISE and Background NEWS

The future is occurring more and more as a function of a booming, buzzing foreground NOISE and less and less a function of the background NEWS. The NOISE is often filled with more hindrances than helps whereas the NEWS in its correct form expresses more helps than hindrances.

The Foreground NOISE (Negligence — Oppression — Illness/Injury — Stagnation — Excuses) influences you. Just as the Background NEWS (drawing insights and ideas from North — East — West — South) influences you.

This foreground NOISE and background NEWS, whatever its nature, is pointing at and is influencing grandparenting and co-creating of Well-Living Communities.

Where the well-living community is a place of collaboration where
__ people live and work well together
__ people enjoy what they do and do what they enjoy
__ people discover and shape a place where the self meets the world (David Whyte*)
of which families/kinship groups is a well-living community.

Therefore, your abilities for Reflections and Discernments of the NOISE are dynamically balancing your Intentions and Commitments from the NEWS. You help sort the hindrances of NOISE so your grandchildren can listen to the helps of the NEWS.

Herein, is the need for a collaborative conversation among you, your grandchildren, and those who support this relationship.

In Conversation with You

Assuming that you acknowledge this foreground and background situation, and recognize it as being as it seems, you may ask:

• What is the nature of this foreground? What is the nurture of this background?
• How can you get to the foreground with understanding? How can you gift the background with comprehension?
• How do you design or co-create a response to the NOISE? How do you design or co-create a message with the NEWS?
• Does your ordinary everyday experience of well-being for self and well-living with others demonstrate alignment, connectedness, and completeness or something else?

For Your Consideration

Back in historical times when the change was not so rampant and rapid, persons were satisfied. There was a sense of continuity and coherence even under, in hindsight, difficult, and oppressive times. During and after major conflicts, for instance, there was growth, camaraderie, and purposefulness despite the foreground NOISE.

In surveying this landscape, wholeness was a relationship between the foreground and the background and not just what is happening in the foreground.

During a conflict, the mission is “to stop the misaligned forces” and relationship was an important part in achieving this mission. Therefore, it was essential to leverage the background concepts and practices to deal with what was happening in the foreground.

So when the strategy, structure, relationships, communication, and resources are aligned, true, and compatible, persons say that the community — the groups, the families, the organizations — is able to move with agility in any direction it chooses.

This capacity for transition is therefore a function of the equilibration between the foreground and the background, between the NOISE and the NEWS.

Regardless of what you are trying to do — whether it is pursuing the building of a community center, planting trees, offering affordable housing, dealing with water issues in another country, rewilding the environment, introducing your grandchildren to the natural world, etc. — sustainable success is directly related to the capacity to integrate the foreground and background.

Integration in the foreground on its own, however, only produces more complexity — it widens the gap between the foreground and the background and ultimately leads to resignation.

What is currently happening in your community as a whole, is that more and more of the foreground is occurring as a breakdown. Which is overwhelming persons’ capacities to be responsive in any meaningful way.

This interpretation describes and explains the resignation, disengagement, and stagnation that is now reaching epidemic proportions. Conversely, moving people to violent actions and civil disobedience often resulting in damage to private property and businesses.

In order to align the foreground and the background, what is needed and what has been missing is a sound, rigorous way of understanding the nature of the background in general and how the background is occurring within the foreground organization of the community — your family — your kinship groups.

As Grandparents, Let’s Rescript This Unfolding — Enfolding Story

What grandparents — You — need is a platform that is simple, reliable, inexpensive, collaborative, and which, above all, is actionable — that is, this platform guides solid thinking and action.

You need tools and techniques (technologies) that let you see the arrangement of connections between your foreground commitments and the transparent background from which those commitments can be realized.

If you agree — continue walking with us.
If you venture out on your own — consider sharing your learning.

So What? What Else? Now What?

In the weeks and months to follow, with the assistance of the WELLth Movement, I/you/we can help grandparents who step forward to improve, focus, and strengthen the co-creation of the Well-Living Community — a community platform of programs and projects, and processes and products grandparents (and grandchildren) can access to support grandparenting with involvement in the natural world.

If you can’t wait, then use the Website Contact Form to ask questions — share comments — sign up for updates about the WELL-Living Community for Grandparents.

Contact Coordinates:
https://wellthmovement.com/contact — join the list, ask a question
https://wellthmovement.com/wellth-blog

*David Whyte — a poet — the original reference was about “work” — I extended it to include well-living communities. Reference Origin