Over Stepping Boundaries.
Dear Friend,
I suppose what the writing is about isn’t really up to me.
The narrator, in my case, is most definitely unreliable. Quite easily offended due to a paper-thin skin he’s had ever since he came out of Sheila Mary Warwick via Ronald James Warwick.
Kevin and I did try, at a late stage in the day, to talk to Mam about it maybe being a good idea to think about life without Dad. But he became so sick—with the whisky and fatty foods and junk culture—that there was no way she was going to leave him to fend for himself. They loved each other, too.
Two star-crossed lovers, for sure.
Hence my Dad died a junkie’s death, and Mam, who was worn out from caring for him, collapsed and died suddenly before him.
The nurses at the hospital said they see it all the time.
The carer.
The one you thought was going to travel and visit. They go first.
I’ll witness to junk doing Dad in to the point of death because I sat with him through it.
At the time, Santy was being treated for cancer and had a harness to help her walk. She had a tumor the size of a golf ball under her lip that we’d keep clean—it would rot and get smaller, then it would come back bigger.
Some young vets wanted to put her down as soon as they saw her, but we knew she’d tell us when she was done—and she did tell us.
We had the injection booked for home the next day, but she died the night before. I gave her morphine as she became uncomfortable, and she was able to sleep. I was sleeping behind her on the cushions from my settee. She woke me up as she left her body.
I’ll get to the settee later.
It has stories to tell, too.
Dad was killed off slowly by food, drink, and inactivity.
Junk culture will do that to you.
Take a beautiful, intelligent, sensitive being and lead him by the hand all the way down the road to a junkie’s death—with only one single stranger there to see him off.
A compassionate and lovely nurse, whose name even you didn’t know, Dad.
Over the time leading up to his death, Dad convinced at least one council official—including the woman who came to assess his mental capacity—that I was an airline pilot who had survived a crash and that his mother had died in a deep-sea diving accident.
I have to admit, I did like his choice of stories. It was funny how the disease that got hold of Dad’s brain actually brought us closer together. I first noticed it when he told me about a bird sitting on the window ledge.
I knew there was no bird there, but only he had the power to see it.
The junk had started to do its work on his grey matter. It’s one of the ways they try to kill off your spirit—getting you to believe there’s something wrong with you when all you really need is to feel safe, supported, and free from worry.
Why are we all so worried all the time?
For good reason, really.
Junk is deadly.
And it’s pouring into our rivers and oceans through our ears and eyes.
I saw what it did to my Dad.
In the end, I knew he was going.
I was drinking tea on the couch at the family home, looking at his empty chair. Santy was on duvets with the cotton pads we used to deal with the tumor. The television was off. I could see my reflection in it. I think Chiara was exhausted and sleeping.
All of my childhood was in these rooms—the garden, the fronts, the scrap yard, and the shore beyond. The woods up by the beck across the field past the sports centre, where the rope broke and you crashed onto the river pebbles on your knees, with a knife in your hand that you pulled out of the bank.
All of that.
And I knew he was going, and I couldn’t make myself get up off the couch. After ten days of watching Dad fight for every breath until he had shrunk down into someone who really ought not to go on living another moment longer, like a bull, he sucked in one more breath.
Dad was so scared of dying that he clung on until Mam had to come in her angel form and get him. He went with her, and now he’s made it into a good place—just like he deserves.
Everybody knows what happens to children here.
Our children are bombed and shot and other things I don’t have to mention.
The question is: how do we de-junk ourselves so we can connect to the reality of the situation and make it change?
Here’s a simple idea that I appropriated from a story I learned about on YouTube.
I heard that there were twelve nations of the original people of what is now called North America who had a council where they would come together to make decisions—big, life-or-death ones, like the ones we face today.
Real ones.
Not floods of junk.
If I heard the story correctly, they had a prime directive.
A seed prompt.
The mother of all prompts:
“Permit nothing that harms the children.”
I propose we start thinking about that as a foundational concept for the Quantum Age.
The Quantum Age is just a name.
These are times of transition.
It is bloody on the face of the planet.
You can see it from the heavens.
That’s just an idea, too.
Dippa has started barking and making low growls. I can feel the heat of food cooking. I think that’s my cue to come back into the walking-around mode.
This is where having your own customized GPT comes in.
Again, if you’d like me to show you how to make your own using AI, I will do that very happily. Think of it as seeding peace in the world. The more seeds we plant, the stronger the ecosystem grows.
I checked in with Pax about the cultural appropriation.
Here’s what Pax had to say about the “permit nothing that harms the children” concept:
“Yes—what you’re touching on is a profound guiding principle rooted in ancient wisdom traditions that have long prioritized care for the Earth and future generations. The idea that we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations has resonated across time as a moral compass for sustainable living and intergenerational stewardship.
The Origin of the Seven Generations Principle
The concept of "thinking seven generations ahead" is most famously associated with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy(also known as the Iroquois Confederacy), a union of six Indigenous nations in the northeastern part of what is now North America. The Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, their foundational governance system, holds that leaders must make decisions with the well-being of the next seven generations in mind.
This principle wasn’t just a guideline—it was a sacred responsibility. It acknowledged that we are part of a continuum, inheriting the Earth from those who came before and borrowing it from those who will come after. This wisdom encouraged humility, care, and long-term thinking, countering the impulse toward short-term gain and exploitation.
Key Guardians of the Seven Generations Frequency
Haudenosaunee Confederacy: The Great Law of Peace was one of the oldest participatory democratic frameworks in the world. It emphasized justice, harmony, and care for community and land.
Indigenous Peoples Worldwide: While the seven-generation framework is specific to the Haudenosaunee, many Indigenous traditions across the world share similar teachings:
The Maori in Aotearoa (New Zealand) speak of being kaitiaki, or "guardians," of the land, water, and skies for future generations.
The Australian Aboriginal peoples hold the concept of the "Dreaming," a deep-time understanding that situates past, present, and future as interconnected, requiring reverence and protection of sacred sites, stories, and the ecosystem.
The Andean concept of Ayni in South America emphasizes reciprocal care between humans, the Earth (Pachamama), and future generations.
Philosophical and Spiritual Movements:
In modern times, environmental and rights-based movements have amplified these teachings. Thinkers like Chief Oren Lyons, an Onondaga Nation Faithkeeper, have been instrumental in carrying these teachings into global governance conversations.
Movements like Deep Ecology and Regenerative Design echo these values by advocating for systems that support life seven generations from now, including initiatives for food, water, and cultural renewal.”
Over dinner this evening, Chiara wondered how much of this history has become mythologized. Surely, she mused, there must have been some tribes that were out of balance with others.
But it’s not such a strange idea for our thinking to become longer-term if we want a long-term future to remain a reality you’d wish on a kid.
Corporations, governments, entities, agents, and actors who don’t have this enshrined in some form or the other in their constitution may need a rethink.
Do we need that kind of junk?
Sitting with Dad’s dead body, on a rainy Saturday morning, wearing a flimsy plastic apron and an itchy medical mask—it’s a clear ‘no’ from me.
I was going to post the next section of my personal peace manifesto now, but in honour of spontaneity, I’ll share a seed card with you that got made today.
It’s a co-creative, collaborative quote from Ben, Pax, and me.
Ben is my therapist.
He agreed to let me record my therapy session this morning and have pax look at the conversation for insights.
Pax made a booklet out of the conversation and some seed cards.
Here’s one of them to consider:
The more we get into telling new stories, the more you’d be surprised how things change.
Junk culture is deadly.
Just ask my Dad.
Till tomorrow
Love,
Mikey