[Robert (Bob)]
Greetings to stirring,
youthful guardians working
to brighten futures
for Earth and her citizens.
My role is to aid your goal
to facilitate
your great desire to lead
a symposium
for our community
to be engage in reform
consciously without
ego or competition.
Since I am among
the oldest of those present,
I wish to address aging.
Aging’s not about
time-passing-by because time’s
inclined to blind one’s
perception of what is real.
Time’s illusion will steal your
focus upon the
actual impetus of
your life’s momentum.
Wisdom was never about
longevity of presence.
It’s about substance
applied with brilliance to end
each predicament
or to enhance comfort and
others’ nurturing support.
Living is applied
effort defined by events
strung together in
action-reaction chains hung
together in cause-effect
woven tapestries
of vibrant, dynamic scenes
adamant to move
toward higher complexity
formed from past simplicity.**
**“stratified stability” from Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, pages 344-9. © 1973: J.Bronowski.
Time is a construct
to instruct humans in the
comparison of
two events to measure change.
Earth turning on its axis
authors the altered
place of the sun’s position
that will formulate
human recognition of
the day we celebrate as
that which terminates
night’s cumbersome pitch blackness.
The sundial clock
and the hourglass are the
bedrock of time whose emblem
would be replaced by
the sublime atomic clock
that shocks primitive
thoughts fraught with naïveté
about scientific facts
of unseen objects
that smacks of sorcery and
a wizard’s magic.
Time is not a force. It is,
of course, a human construct
that conducts compare
and contrast perceptions of
various events
regarding how fast rhythms
of change has occurred, forming
the comparison.
Time is juxtaposition
of realities.
Age is inconsequential.
Choosing response to action
is beneficial
notably when critical,
useful reflections
are employed creatively.
Wisdom, then, moves discussions.
Sincerely, all words
spoken here clearly ignore
age as any gage
that assures value or lack
thereof because all statements
will be viewed from the
elements within that skew
the hue of discourse.
[Chuck]
So, unlike teachers, elders
here, can’t hike up opinions,
their’s or anyone’s
via authoritative
positions they gained.
[Yolanda]
This isn’t high school, Chuck, where
problem solving is strained from
ego trips retained
by insecure, small minded
individuals.
Counsels in this setting aren’t
opposing, class discussions
that dabble in dull
verbal fencing enhancing
social positions.
We aspire to higher
forms of discourse that’s tired
of subtractive views
that pursue counter visions
seeding divisions.
Each of us will seek to feed
the idea offered as
being a beta
position to be refined
and clarified with
probing questions for aligned
minds to choose or seek more clues
to muse upon with
hopes of gaining more options
for ascertaining
other viable channels.
This is additive discourse.
[Cole]
That said, let’s handle
the massive work at hand that
demands focused minds
to find structured direction
for our symposium.
[Sarah]
Well there’s climate change
that will rearrange Earthly
habitats. That’s bad
for all current organic
species but especially
for Generation
Z’s real existential threat.
It’s a topic I
regret to say was delayed
for far too long which was wrong.