Skip to main content

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

Please be free to leave your comments

 

 

 


Comments

  1. Klaire Davwar25 November 2020 at 00:30

    This piece really got me thinking, there is so much to life.
    More muse sir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown29 November 2020 at 17:00

    Just learned something new
    Well said!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FIRST THING FIRST

  Our Default Setting  So I have a friend who has this significant order he looks up to a lot. He has made it in life as an international professor based in the United State and has all the right connections (if you get what I mean). My friend had this deeply ingrained mindset back then in school that once he is done with undergraduate studies, getting employed will not be an issue for him. Five years down the line, he is still pulling and pushing through life to make both ends meet. What happened to the hope he had of being helped by his significant order? Quashed. I know you can relate to this story, you might have heard similar experiences with people you look up to fail you, disappoint you, and let you down. Nigerians believe that the easiest way to get disappointed and useless in life is to look up to your uncle. (How true is this? you judge for yourself). Such is life as we see it. At the end of the day, your help and lifting may or may not come through such people that ...
2 comments
Read more

DON'T JUST LOSE IT

So I failed to send out the publicity for what I am to write on and share with you yesterday; partly because I have been dragging with my health lately and the fact that writer's block came visiting. Just like trust, consistency is one thing that once established, you don't just lose it. Building consistency is like earning trust, it takes time but can or may be lost in a blink of an eye. So I thought about this yesterday, knowing that someone out there may be waiting on me to send something out today, and here I am, about to make the waiting go down the drain. Well, I had to write something. In life, we exert our efforts, direct our attention and channel our determination to achieve or get some things through persistence, only to let them slip past our fingers because we lack the keeping power of consistency. What I mean is, persistence gets it, consistency keeps it; so by all means, in your persistence, be consistent.  In describing what consistency is not, Hundred Life Desig...
1 comment
Read more

The 4 Heartbeats of COMMITMENT

  In my last piece, I established that commitment is the spine upon which every worthy achievement in life stems. It counts the cost and pays the proportionate price. Commitment singles you out of the crowd. Don't travel this life without adding tones of commitment to your backpack. I also added that where you are and who you are right now is not in any way unrelated to the number of commitments you have made in the past. To drive the nail further down into the coffin, I will share four major variables that serve as the heartbeats of commitment. Through them, commitment comes alive, and with them, we see, touch, and feel the reality of commitment. Commitment is Sacrificial  If you are committed to someone or something, the first proof is that you sacrifice or give your all for it. Here, you bet your life, stake it out and lay it down on the line. The pages of history are scattered with men and women who were committed to worthy causes and people they loved and valued; the proo...
3 comments
Read more