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The footprints on the snow melt too fast

Francisco Miraval

One recent morning I left my house very early, but, as soon as the car was out of the garage and in the driveway, I discovered I had forgotten something inside the house. I stopped the car, went back into the house, got what I needed, and went back inside the car. I was about to drive away when I noticed the footprints I had left on the snow.

There was not that much accumulation, so the footprints were very detailed, more than the usual footprints on the snow. It was very easy to reconstruct my footsteps looking at those footprints. In fact, almost anybody could have pointed out where I began to walk, where I went, and what way I walked from the house back to the car.

Everything was there, clearly indicated by the snow. I then thought that perhaps the snow was just a metaphor for life and for the footprints we leave following our way thought life. In a sense, every moment of our life is already being technologically recorded and we leave so many “footprints” our lives could be easily reconstructed using our cell phones, credit cards, GPS, and similar sources of information.

But, in another sense, there are no footprints on the snow until somebody makes them, such as in life. And only when you leave a footprint somebody can reconstruct the life you lived. I am not talking about the reconstruction of knowing what you bought or where you were when. I am talking about a historical reconstruction that will give depth and meaning to your footprints.

I was thinking about all that and I suddenly realized I was still parked in my driveway and it was time for me to go to my appointment. So, I drove away, I went to my appointment and, after the meetings was over, I went back home two hours after I left. And my footprints were gone. There was not even an indication they have been ever there.

Because of that, there was no way, not even for me, to reconstruct my own steps, the steps I took that same morning, just a couple of hours earlier. The snow was gone and it took with it the footprints of my life, erasing them forever. Of course, I still had in me the memory of my morning walk, but all the footprints were gone.

Then, I asked myself how long the footprints of our lives will last. And if those footprints disappear (and they will, even sooner than we realize), and if, at the same time, I can’t remember details of my own life, what then is left of my life to be remembered? Who will remember my life? And for how long?

Perhaps all our life is like walking on the snow of time, leaving superficial and ephemeral footprints that will disappear as soon as we make them. Or perhaps each of our footprints will last forever, secretly kept in some unknown place of the universe.

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