“As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood’s dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges” – Rilke

Wintery Sunday morning all foggy outside, a mug of rich velvety hot chocolate, broadband …aaaah heavenly :) The teeny little girl on my lap in head-to-toe pinkness has just been introduced to Cute Overload ..interspersed with occassional beeps of the IM (from my matey Rafiq who’s still in bed and connecting on Mxit and then from my brother Dave, working on a Sunday :-/). Alex (the 4yr old laptop) shows me the camera & tells me about Skyping her granny in the States.. and wants to see who I’m speaking to (real-time typing an acceptable form of speaking to her) .. we tootle over to Flickr, where she recognises the painting hanging in the lounge from my photos on Flickr.. and so it goes.. her world seamlessly connected into mixed-reality existence, as with all Born Digital babes, this interconnectedness is normal :-) We are building the multidimensional worlds they will live and work in. NOW.

I’m blessed to be living in one of the world’s most naturally beautiful cities at the last edge of the African continent, but get to connect to the global mind at a keystroke. Living here is a constant reminder that we don’t just pass on one flourishing rich interconnected online world to the next generation :: with it comes our fragile, increasingly toxic world – once burgeoning in all its exquisite and unfathomable natural abundance. Using one to fund the other is not just a pathetic show of greed and short-sightedness, but that we’re losers of the greatest magnitude of stupidity.

Right now, we’re at the inflection point of evolution.. do we have the balls for the BIGGEST game ever laid on for humanity, or do we continue the primitive game of smash & grab and blame someone else for the mess we leave in our wake? Because what can one person do anyway? Well anyone who has even a vague idea of Web 2.0 has now had that delusion vanquished.

What will it take, what kind of courage/determination/vision will our leaders need, to swing the tide and lead us on a true Hero’s Journey? What stories, what myths will guide our hearts. Who will tell us the next BIG STORY? One where the pervasive parasite of FEAR is finally squelched.

Then having walked through heaving hell, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy we return to bliss, to Paradise.. our karmic debt finally settled up.

I love a good fairytale :: having to tuck tiny ones in bed with stories of brave princesses and big-hearted heroes, fiery dragons & insurmountable odds has me yearning for the grown-up version… the CALL TO ADVENTURE has begun to ring in my ears.

On the other side of this war-ravaged reality? With the wonderment that we’ve achieved the impossible as prize. Not for us the idealised innocent purity of a child in our new Golden Age, but perhaps to their children.
As the warriors who fought for the birthing of this world we’d get the sweetness of a well-worn life: perhaps battle-scarred & wise, but utterly deserving of our re.created reality of peace, fun and love.

Now THAT would be an evolutionary leap worth hanging around for; an adventure worth living for.. and one to proudly hand over to the bright-eyed ones who look up to us so trustingly now.