Many may have heard of a detective who identifies and catches criminals based on footprints left in a courtyard and grains of sand clinging to their shoes…Sherlock Holmes. Although this is considered a special feature of his investigative method, it also makes something else clear: our footsteps mark the journeys we have travelled. When we walk along a muddy path, mud sticks to our footwear. When we walk along a beach and return, sugary sand clings to it. All these are also marks of the life we have lived.
Where we travel, how we travel and through what we travel- all these are important. It is true that wherever we go, certain traces remain. What kind of traces those are is what gives meaning to our journeys. I have seen some people, having reached the evening of their lives, grumbling and grieving with a heavy heart-“it should not have been so,” “it was not right”- these are their laments. That means their footsteps went wrong somewhere. It also means they stumbled somewhere along the way.
No matter how much we try to hide or forget, time will leave behind certain traces. Those traces later become the basis on which we are judged in the name of the paths we took. May each of our footsteps be such that they do not leave behind traces of guilt or self-condemnation. If so, we will never have to carry the burden of the paths we have already walked.
