Older is Better

I was sitting in my favorite chair: a recliner that allows me to arm-reach everything I might need -- end table with small drawer; lamp; electrical outlet; TV remote; etc.  I was thinking about an earlier chat I had about the importance of bringing back, or more importantly, hanging onto our indigenous wisdom.

This internal dialogue was interrupted by my son’s text saying that he needed a ride home. It was Sunday morning.

A bit of history: Friday evening after work I had to swing by his school on my way home because he needed $10 to buy a ticket to attend a dance Saturday night. I pulled up to his school, handed him a ten dollar bill from my car window. He vanishes back into his school. Several minutes later he and his two buddies walk out and get into my car. Those three hung out after school while waiting for me – more importantly -- my $10. My son’s two friends remembered that they needed to bring $10 to school before Friday.

My son…he forgot!

After several trips over the weekend, I realized that I am my son’s personalized Uber. The main difference is that I give him money after riding him places.

Back to my chair and thoughts about indigenous knowledge. As I am typing this my two sons have their faces in their smart phones and my lovely wife, although it is Sunday, is on her laptop finishing her work from the past week.

Information is not knowledge. We are bombarded with information from our TVs, world wide web, and all kinds of other technologies. We are not obtaining knowledge from these tools, what we are mostly doing is obtaining information. Mainly, unusable information.

We are extremely lucky to be living in a time with so much information at our fingertips. We have many great tools in our lives: Cars, electric, walmarts, etc. Our Native American ancestors, our great leaders, had to get information and “things” in a very differ way. The older way is better.

Which would you prefer, living in a world with clean water, air and food with very little technology? Or in our current world where everything we need is arm’s length, but the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we consume – are poisoned?

Our ancestors’ bodies and minds were clean - not toxic like ours. They were vaccinated by Mother Nature. The strongest survived, led and taught. There teachings came from purity of thought, body and community.

Our Native Ancestors lived in a world that was pure, clean, and full of knowledge.

We live in a world that alters the body and mind with contagions.  

Older is better and we need to learn from our clean ancestors and never let that knowledge go.