Making our mark

Ambitious people are not the only ones who like to make their mark on earth. Ordinary people who accept who they are also like to leave their mark.

I hike every weekend, as I have told you before. Over time, I have met people on the trail who are regular hikers, like me, and I have made their acquaintance. Some of them have grown attached to the trail and decided they have the right to do things to nature and the trail.

A trail doesn’t lie static. You will see occasional changes here and there that slowly modify the “scenery” of the path you thought you knew so well. I have started to observe things that people do to the trail. I have seen people—actually, I’ve seen the results rather than people at work—opening up small terraces by the hillside, in order to make more room for their daily exercise routines. They treat it almost like their own garden, and try to beautify the space by planting flowering shrubs along the border of the terrace they have created.

In another spot, some hikers must have burnt the grass to enlarge a small sitting area. They have cut off the smaller branches of surrounding trees to allow more sunlight to shine into the area.

Once, I met an elderly man who proudly told his companion about his gardening achievements, how he had relocated a small tree from another spot and planted it here. It hadn’t worked out, and now he had put a new tree, also transplanted, in that location, and he hoped this one would work out fine. I find it fascinating to hear his references to the hillside, as if it were his own garden.

I guess we all want to make a difference in this world, in whatever manner it may be and regardless of our humble origins. But, to my mind, children are the best mark we can make on this world.

We are so accustomed to thinking of age in relation to categories—children, adolescents, adults, seniors—or in terms of needs and functions—start pre-school at age 3 (or whatever), start to drive at 18 (16 in some countries), join a senior center at age 60, and so on. If we try to think of age in a nonlinear and expansive manner, not limiting our ideas of age and ageing to the boundaries of a physical body, and if age is a mark that we make as we travel through time, which changes in form and nature depending on our growth and development, then this mark gains or loses significance one way or another over time and finally becomes a mark we leave behind on this earth. Looking at life this way, it is not just great people who leave their marks on this earth. We have all left our “footprints” somewhere as we age. Isn’t this idea immensely comforting?

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.