Walking on Pensacola beach early this morning with the best life teammate, Ashliegh McLean, and a few thoughts struck me. As we looked before us, there was flat sand. No footprints, no cooler marks, no people. As we continued to walk, I sporadically looked over my shoulder to look at the footprints we left behind us. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “man, this is just like life.“
As we look ahead into our lives, so many unmade decisions lie before us. The opportunities are endless. If some of us are lucky enough, we have foot prints before us that we can follow. But the reality is, there is no telling where life will take us. The people, the impact, the relationships, the jobs, the day to day interaction, the phone calls, the text messages, the opportunities, they all lie before us like flat sand. Every time we come across a decision in life, it is an example of a footprint being left on our path.
I realized that just like this morning, once the footprint is imprinted on the sand, it becomes fact. I realize that we can leave footprints in a lot of different areas of our life. We leave footprints in the lives of our spouses, children, friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, and day to day interactions. I also realized that every footprint that you leave, good or bad, is an opportunity for someone to come behind you, and put their feet in the same footprint you left. And that, in my opinion, holds a lot of responsibility. You are an example to others on a daily basis. We can choose to leave a positive or a negative footprint on this world. We can make good decisions and bad decisions. We can have healthy interaction and toxic interaction. We can breathe life into others and darkness into others. We can speak into this world positivity, or negativity. We can treat people with respect, empathy, and love, or we can treat people with disrespect, disassociation, and hate.
The choice is yours. There are hundreds of miles of flat sand ahead of you. And every step that you take is a lasting impact on the way someone remembers you. The way the world remembers you.
The good news is that there is still flat sand. No matter the footprints that we’ve left so far in life, we still have flat, clean sand ahead of us. Every day, every interaction, every opportunity is a chance to change the trajectory of the path ahead of us & the footprints we leave behind us.
When we look over our shoulder behind us at the footprints we’ve left, are we proud of the impact that we’ve made on the world? As we continue to look ahead at flat sand, can we hold our life decisions & interactions with high responsibility, choose each footprint with high intention? Starting today, let’s create a path that we can one day look back on and be proud of.
What a life well lived that would be.
Thank you Pensacola beach for being beautiful & God for always talking to me through Your unbelievable creations
~APC
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