Look Down.

Earlier today, I walked down this exact same sidewalk. I walked right over these words.

Didn't see them. Didn't read them. Didn't even know they were there.

I'm in downtown Appleton, Wisconsin, for a work trip, and like most workdays, my brain was probably already three steps ahead of wherever my feet happened to be.

Where am I going next? What do I need to get done? What am I forgetting?

You know... life.

Later that evening, I decided to go for a walk. No real agenda. No place I needed to be. I put my AirPods in, turned on some music, and just started walking.

And that's when I noticed the sidewalk.

Literally.

Carved into the concrete beneath my feet were words. Not advertisements. Not street signs. Little messages.

I stopped. I read one. Took a picture.

Then I found another.

And another.

Before long, my walk had turned into a little scavenger hunt. I found myself looking for the next one.

Which is when something occurred to me.

These were here earlier.

I had walked this exact same sidewalk just hours before.

How did I miss them?

I Was There. But I Wasn't Really There.

I think we do that a lot.

We wake up. Get ready. Go to work. Answer emails. Sit in meetings. Make dinner. Drive the kids somewhere. Check our phones. Think about tomorrow. Worry about something that happened yesterday.

We're constantly going somewhere.

And sometimes we're so damn busy living our lives that we forget to actually notice our lives.

That's what struck me about these stupid little pieces of concrete. They hadn't changed. The sidewalk hadn't changed.

I had.

Earlier, I was walking because I was trying to get somewhere. Now I was walking simply because I wanted to walk.

I had music playing. I wasn't watching the clock. I wasn't thinking about where I needed to be next.

And suddenly I started noticing things.

Time Doesn't Bow to Anyone

Then I came across this one:

“Time does not bow to anyone.”

Well...

If there was ever a sentence carved into concrete that could stop me in my tracks, apparently that's it.

Time is weird. When we're young, it feels endless. Then somehow you blink and you're looking at pictures of your kids from ten years ago wondering how the hell that happened.

Your parents get older. You get older. Relationships change. People enter your life. People leave it.

Entire chapters begin and end while you're busy worrying about what needs to get done Tuesday afternoon.

And yet we spend so much of our time rushing toward the next thing.

Maybe that's why that sentence hit me.

Time doesn't bow to anyone.

Not me. Not you.

It just keeps moving.

The People We Choose

A little farther down the sidewalk was another:

“The ones that you're stuck with
are chosen by blood,
but the ones that you stick with
are chosen with love.”

Another pause. Another picture. Another reminder.

Some people are given to us. Others somehow find their way into our lives.

Friends. Coworkers. Neighbors. Relationships. People we meet completely by accident who end up becoming important parts of our story.

Some stay for decades. Some only stay for a chapter.

And maybe that's okay.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the people who choose to stay.

We Really Need to Take More Walks

None of this is groundbreaking. We've all heard some version of:

Stop and smell the roses. Be present. Enjoy the little things.

I've probably written those exact words before.

And yet apparently I still need the occasional sidewalk in Appleton, Wisconsin, to remind me.

Because knowing something and actually living it are two very different things.

We're busy. I'm busy.

There will always be another email. Another meeting. Another project. Another notification. Another problem that feels incredibly important right now and probably won't matter nearly as much a year from now.

Sometimes we need to put all of it down for a little while. Put on some music. Go outside. Walk. Look around.

Hell, look down.

And sometimes what you find doesn't need some big life lesson attached to it.

This one just made me smile.

Maybe there's someone out there waiting for you to say something. Maybe you're waiting for them. Maybe both of you are too scared, too busy, or too caught up in your own heads to realize you're thinking the exact same thing.

Or maybe it's just a few words carved into a sidewalk.

Either way, I would've completely missed them earlier that day.

And I think that's the point.

There's a lot happening around us that we're missing.

Each Day Is a Fresh Start

Eventually I came across one more. There were leaves scattered across it, and some of the words were harder to see.

But I could still read them:

“Each day is a fresh start;
Set goals
Take breaks
Love yourself
You are not your past.”

Yeah.

That one stayed with me.

Maybe because of where I am in life right now.

The last year has brought a lot of change. Some of it I chose. Some of it I didn't. There have been endings. There have also been beginnings.

And I'm learning that those two things often happen at exactly the same time.

You are not your past.

You can learn from it. You can appreciate it. You can miss parts of it. You can even wish some of it had turned out differently.

But you don't have to live there.

Each day really is a fresh start.

Set some goals. Take some breaks. Love the people around you. Love yourself.

Be grateful that you can walk down a street with music in your ears and absolutely nowhere you need to be for the next twenty minutes.

And every once in a while...

Look down.

You never know what you might have been walking over the entire time.