An Intergenerational Call to Action

Source Feed: The Future of HR: Holistic Regeneration

Published: 2026-06-17 12:39:55

Content Type ID: 3

I recently joined my first in-person book club (after co-facilitating various virtual book clubs since 2020) with a beautifully diverse group of people I met at a local Bioregional Unconference in the Bay Area. We are engaging with protopian multimedia content (books, videos, podcasts) with one question guiding our shared exploration: “What does this teach us about radically transforming society?”

The poem below was inspired by a YouTube conversation with one of the authors from our list: Michael Mezzatesta’s interview with Rob Hopkins, author of Falling in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Changing the World.

An Intergenerational Call to Action

My 19-yr-old cousin
Is training to become
A firefighter in California
During a time when,
Our most certain future
Smells like death by a thousand flames.

I fear for a future forged,
By youth of yesterday who lost their way
And youth of today,
Whose hope and wonder
Have already been squandered.

Youth should not have to clean up
The messes of the old.
Never has a worse story been told
Than "the youth are our future."

The future we long for
Is at our fingertips
Wistfully whispering
To awaken and act at any age.

Arise, all
Arise soon!
Build up your intergenerational platoons.
Our regenerative future
Is worth fighting for.

What does this have to do with HR, you might ask? If I felt like trying a little harder, I could probably draw some connections between the importance of mentorship and how place and identity shape career aspirations, or how the capitalist delusion sucks hope and purpose out of people over time and it’s a systemic trauma, not a personal failure…but, I want to let this poem stand on its own, and it’s 5:30am here now. So, I’m hoping that now that the poem is out, my mind will let my body rest again and I can catch a few more hours of sleep before I head to my new favorite job in the world (more on that later, I’m sure).

P.S. Our book club doors are open to SF Bay Area locals, and we meet in person on July 1st to discuss the first half of Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk (who is on Substack, by the way, and just turned 75!). Reach out if you’d like to join us. I’m also more than happy to share our list of books and other media, so you can get your own bioregional protopian book club going, too.

Share

Check out some of my earlier musings on how the Divine Feminine continues to initiate transformation in the workplace:

• The Simple Life. Substack. April 11, 2024.

• Ambition. Substack. April 4, 2024.

• Dear MBA Student. Substack. Jan 8, 2024.

• Workweek Redesign for Recovering High-Achievers. Substack. Nov 21, 2023.

• A Call for Spiritual Creatives. State of Formation. July 2, 2019.