My dad (whose birthday is coming in a few days) was a pretty quiet person. Sometimes, he would make a statement that wouldn’t be entirely to my liking, and he would ask, “Did you ever stop to think about that?” Well, no, I hadn’t, but when I did stop and think about it, I saw that he was right. He wasn’t one to press a point; he didn’t have to. And now, I stop and think about a lot of things that once I never noticed at all.
I stop and think about how we leave tracks behind us showing where we’ve been, as we pass through this life. Maybe not literal footprints, but in ways large and small, we impact others and events. In years to come, when we look back, what will we feel? Pride? Shame? A quiet satisfaction or sadness? Or, do we feel a mixture of all these and more? Do we move events along, or do they move us? Do we forge new paths or follow a familiar highway? Do we make detours that get us into trouble or do they result in wonderful discoveries?
As a teen, when I got ready to go somewhere, Dad would ask another question, “Where are you going?” I might not be eager to share that information, but I always told him. As I look back now, I know that he was not being controlling, but he felt responsible for my safe keeping.
I love history and thinking about people of the past, where they’ve gone, what they’ve done, and why they did it. Recently, there was a fascinating news story about the discovery of the bones of King Richard III. The scientific community was elated to at last find where he was buried. They pieced together his skeleton and found out a lot about how he had died and, for that matter, why. The monarch who lived more than 500 years ago did not have a long life but his impact on history was pretty great. And, he emerged as a young warrior king involved in a bitter struggle.
In the yard where my parents used to live, stands an old wagon wheel. Its utilitarian past is finished and now it is a yard ornament with a flower growing beside it. But, as I look at that old wheel, I wonder why it’s there, where it came from, and how many miles it traveled. I wonder about the people who once sat above it in a wagon bed and the horses who pulled it along. It’s a reminder that although transportation has changed greatly through the years, that wheel once played an important part in someone’ s life and made a lot of tracks in dusty, unpaved roads. It’s a trace of what has gone before. Dad might ask, “Did you ever stop to think about that?” And now, I do.
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