A Minute Reflecting Can Change the World
Some mornings when I’m ready to be still and reflect, I’ll sit back, click over to my writing blog, and find something I’ve written before to see where I’ve been while I think about where I might be going next. This morning in seconds I landed on something called, “Remarkable Footprints.”
Whenever I’m in the midst of travel or meetings, it seems a nice way to explain how the world has supported me and how I rely on it to keep me going. Here it is.
Remarkable Footprints
Iâd been watching the water since just about sun up. Iâd been writing in my journal, thinking about life and stuff. A reoccurring theme kept playing in my head and on the page I was writing on. Like the waves on the ocean that theme kept repeating, repeating without regard to the sky, the sand, or my staring and wondering.
My life keeps circling round to lessons Iâve met before. The same mishaps keep happening. The same rugs keep getting pulled. Two years now had been as if all of the losing and learning had been wrapped and served up to me at once. This time it had come close to changing me. The concrete way down there was all that had kept the wolves from coming in.
I put my pencil down to watch the water. Watching was all I had been good at doing for quite a while there. I mentally let the waves wash away worries, clean off the weight of fears that Iâd fought my through. I saw myself lean back on the surface to let my cares float to the sky to dissolve. The bubbles in the wavy foam would have done the same if they could have done what they wanted to. All things in nature know what they must do. People could learn something from that natural way of thinking.
People had told me I was too much or too little, too tall or too filled with feeling. They had made it clear that I couldnât do what I do so well. I came close to actually believing them. What made me want to listen? What stopped me in the end from giving in, from giving up?
Who knows how long before I packed up my journal to walk back to life again. With a new resolve I set off. It was time to say, Youâre wrong. I can. I will. Stand back, and watch me.
When I turned for a last look, I saw people caught in a conversation. They were gathered together at the path I had taken. Who could explain what they saw before them?
They were staring at remarkable footprints in the sand.
credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/500089
What Remarkable Footprints Have You Already Left?
Every step we take leaves a footprint.
We move the molecules of life, earth, air. People see where we got and are moved by our travels.
Others follow because we’ve made the way safer, easier, more meaningful because we’ve been there.
Have you thought about the remarkable footprints you’ve already left for others to follow?
Think about them again.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there back to your blog.