FOOTPRINTS

FOOTPRINTS... where does yours lead?

 

G

rowing up as a village boy, I only got to see beaches in text books and mostly in the few movies I was privileged to have seen. Two things always fascinate me about the beach: first is the shore that avail people space to sit and relax. Second is the footprints of people walking around the beach, some are being washed away immediately after the waters surge over it and some stay a bit longer before they get erased in one way or the other.

As we journey through life, for the entire brief time allocated to us to live, we are constantly leaving behind us footprints, trails and traces of where we have been, and where we eventually ended in life. Worthy of note here is the truth that regardless of how great or otherwise your footprints were or are, others are planting their feet in them. This is one reality in life that if most people integrate as they daily live, it will largely determine the manner with which they live their lives.

L

et me quickly give you two short illustrations to shade more light on this. Last Sunday, one of my friends came over for the weekend. Since secondary school days, he has always loved his afro so much that he hardly touch it. He recently got a teaching job in Bokkos and he was telling me he has no plan of trimming his hair anytime soon. I quickly told him that if not for anything but for the sake of his students he should at least keep the hair decent. He then replied and said it is true because one of his students who happened to have afro went to the barbers and patterned after his style.

Almost a decade ago, my kid brother and I had different sleeping postures. I love sleeping with my head up and my right hand forming the “greater than sign”; this enables me to think and assess how my day went. My kid brother however will wrap himself in the blanket regardless of the weather condition, with his face downward and then zoom off. As time goes on, I noticed with some iota of surprise that the bed was becoming too small, not until I finally realized that my kid bro has changed his sleeping posture and we now have same sleeping posture.

T

hese two illustrations may look too casual, but let me echo this to you that they carry in them one basic principle of life – life begets life. Take a quick look around, if you have significant others especially the ones behind you; you will realize in one way or the other that they are copying one or two things you do whether good or bad. Since the day I realized that my kid bro has successfully copied my sleeping posture, I became very careful and deliberate with everything I do especially around him and many others that are looking up to me.

Just like footprints impressed on the sand by the sea shore, our lives and the manner we live them are leaving prints daily for those coming behind. These footprints are what will live on when we are no more, they are the voices that will speak for us and about us in our absence when we are long gone. Emphatically, this should make us address and redress our posture in life to ensure that we live footprints that are worthy of emulation and will add value to those coming behind.

S

omebody somewhere is silently looking up to you. A life is innocently patterning and modelling after yours. Secretly, someone is aspiring to live your own kind of life. You are the mirror through which such life sees the world's reality, the theory which defines his/her world and the measure with which such life weighs morality. All these are not wrong. The issues here are: What kind of model are you? What kind of mirror are you? Can somebody use you as a practical beneficial theory to define the world? Are the measures of your life true and just? This is life; you transfer your own seed of life to the people looking up to you. Life begets life.

I challenge you to start watching your life’s steps and the kind of footprints you are leaving in the sand of time. Regardless of who you are and where you are right now in life, never forget and doubt that others will surely plant their feet in the prints you leave behind. The idea is never to last but to create and leave something that will last – please leave for the next generation a worthy footprint. May history and posterity be kind to us and may the waves of life never erode the prints we are living behind.

 

Thank you for reading

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