Today, I discuss the effects of the paths we forge throughout our lives by using a personal anecdote about looking beyond the surface in hopes of helping one another make our way out of the woods.

Episode theme music 'Gentle Folds’ by Marco Martini

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, welcome back. 

So you know how in today's digital internet world, we have code that is written specifically to track and analyze every single page we've visited and how long we stayed on that page. Like breadcrumbs relative to websites or the trail you took to arrive at your current location. The data is there, and in the computer world, those are called breadcrumbs.

By looking at those breadcrumbs, one has the ability, I guess if you know how to do these things, to collect information about where you've been and every metric on that journey that you took. So I started to think about this for life in that we do the same with our footprints if you will. 

You know, be it we take a walk, our literal footprint changes the face of the planet. Like we kick a rock, and it goes from one place to another place. It's in a different place than before we arrive at that rock. We kick up leaves as we're walking through the leaf debris of a fall afternoon, we cross a stream to get to the other side of it, and the wetness of the bottom of our shoes turns the other side's dirt to temporary mud.

We simply walk on asphalt, and the heel strike we take literally, albeit minutely, erodes away a very small part of that asphalt. And over time, we create a track that is indistinguishable.

We're always leaving a trail of our experience, whether it's recognizable or not, and so if you extrapolate this out to the world and how we affect both positively and negatively, the world and our environment, well, it's profound.

What's cool about this is to really take this thought and allow it to land in a way for benevolent reasons, right? For reasons of being affecting or contributing. 

Many people don't really have lofty dreams of changing the world or affecting it positively. They're okay with our culture or any of the things that have to do with people.

That's okay. They don't have any dreams of modifying that or helping. That's not necessarily what they were born to do. They want to survive and hopefully thrive in the world without having to be necessarily conscious of the betterment of society. And I respect that. I respect that people want to live good lives and own their own inner bubble, inner circle, and immediate surroundings, and do the best they can there. So this isn't about lofty aspirations of changing the world; it's about recognizing that every single thing we do, just like those breadcrumbs that we visit each of the pages and navigation of a website, they're tracked. They're leaving behind us, behind our journey, the effect of the steps we took—as the examples I gave of walking on in nature, our literal footprint doesn't just leave behind a footprint. It changes things. It changes the planet that we live on. 

And again, these are minute things. I'm using these as an example of how every single thing that we do ripples out to something bigger, even if we're not trying to change the.

Or change culture or change the world for the better. It's actually about knowing that every single thing we do, from walking in the world to the things we say to ourselves and to each other, matters. It's all affecting the face of the equilibrium of the planet, the balance of life, life experiences, the trajectory of our life experiences, the temperature, or the landscape of those life experiences.

The more we can recognize that everything we do matters. What I do matters on whatever level. It matters on grandiose levels. It matters on minute levels, just as equally important levels. So what I'm suggesting today is to be conscious of our breadcrumb trails because what we leave behind, where we go, and what we do matters.

When we walk by and hold contact with someone and smile at a stranger along the way, how we talk to each other on social media, it all matters. It all affects everything. It ripples out in some way, one way or the other. Good or bad, positive or negative, neutral, whatever it is. 

I was in an airport, it's been a few years because it was back when Beto O'Rourke was running for the Texas Senate because I was wearing a Beto for Senate t-shirt and I was getting ready to board a Southwest Airlines flight, and I was walking through with my roller bag, and I see this guy coming towards me with his roller bag, and there weren't many people in the airport at this time.

And again, I'm wearing this Beto for Senate T-shirt, and along comes this guy who is wearing a Trump shirt. So here we are, two very different, in most cases, sadly, divisive perspectives, and they're demonstrated in these two T-shirts, right? Two different perspectives on life can kind of be gleaned by the T-shirts we're wearing.

Now, as we approach each other, the guy looks at me, and he looks down at my t-shirt, and then he looks away. I noticed this. And as I continue to get closer to him, I don't look away. I keep looking at him. I was hoping he would look back up, and he did. He looked back up at me, and I smiled and said, “Good morning.”

And he literally did like a double take and was like all kind of like clumped and said, “Uh, uh, uh, good morning.” 

And then we passed each other and went on our merry ways, and something happened at that moment. This guy thought I was some stupid liberal (which I hate when people lump me into that because I'm more of a moderate than people realize. But that's here nor there). 

But what was interesting is how much I wished as I was boarding my plane later that I could go back and find that guy and just have a cup of coffee with him. Because what I know is that when we approached each other, we thought we were in opposition just from our t-shirts alone.

I could read it on his face. He saw that I was wearing this t-shirt, and he literally looked away from me. 

Of course, I have no clue what's going through his mind. He might, he might have been scared of me. I might have looked like somebody he, I reminded him of someone— I have no idea. What I thought in my mind was, “Oh, he doesn't want to look at me because he knows we have different perspectives on politics at least.”

But the truth is, when we stayed, when one of us was willing to see beyond the t-shirts, We got a chance to smile at each other and say, “Good morning,” and recognize our humanness. That's all that mattered at that moment. It didn't matter whom we voted for.

Now, sure. Would I have questions for this guy when we sat down to coffee? Absolutely. As would he have questions about my t-shirt for me, I would hope. 

But how cool would it be to know that the way we were navigating the rest of our day was in a sense of unity rather than the opposition of, you're a Trumper, you're a Democrat, or whatever we want to call each other. I

Instead, we're just two human beings walking to board our planes who wish each other ‘good morning.’ 

That matters, you guys. 

That matters. 

And therefore, the breadcrumbs you leave, the trails you forge through this beautiful life—drop good breadcrumbs, drop affecting breadcrumbs, walk gently on the planet.

Be conscious of the breadcrumbs. Be conscious of what you do because everything is affecting everything. 

[And, of course, breadcrumbs on a computer about recording where you’ve been, but…] 

…if you set out in a more conscious, deliberate way of navigating the world, the breadcrumbs you drop are going to be salvation for somebody else who needs to find their way out of the woods.

So, Hansel and Gretel, that's my thought for today. 

I'll see you tomorrow.

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The podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jenée Arthur.
Cover art by Jenée Arthur
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