Friday, January 8, 2016


The Art of Wearing Gumboots in 2016

Here's to those people who wear gumboots. Yes, you read that right. Gumboots. As in those rubber things that make your feet big and your steps dint the ground where you walk. Try it.
Try sneaking around. Try leaving no footprints. Try being quiet. Impossible.
Gumboot wearers know this is what our lives should be. Unquiet. A life that happens. A purposeful life, a deliberate act of being present and affecting change, even if it's simply by leaving a mark everywhere we go. No floating through days or grazing in pastures through weeks that turn into months. Gumboot wearers leave footprint everywhere they will ever walk.

Here's the thing,

Everything around you was created, dreamed, written, painted, sang, inspired, built, by PEOPLE. That guy who created Apple? Just a people.
The lead dancer for the New York ballet company? Just a people.
The doctor, the international soccer player, the gardener who planted botanical gardens or simple rose beds in his own backyard, the most inspiring teacher you ever had, your grandmother who is still there for you? Just people. Like you. No better. No worse. No more valuable or important. No more, no less than you.

They had to learn how to walk, how to hold a spoon, and their Mumma tied their shoes once. They had a first day of school and a last day of college. Maybe they walked down the isle, across the isle, back up the isle. Maybe there was no isle. They've walked through doors had doors shut in their faces and banged their heads up against doors they couldn't open. They drive cars and drive their wives mad and their kids up the wall or maybe there is no partner and no kids. They look out windows, wish on stars, make shapes out of clouds or maybe they never star gazed and don't waste time with cloud puppies.
But one thing I do know about all those people?
They ARE people.
And at some point in their lives they put on gumboots and stop trying to go quietly through this world. They decided to learn something, make something, change something, persevere through something. And they did. Because they thought they could. No one is where they are today without first imagining that they could be.

They are people who knew that they were just people and it didn't stop them or limit them or hold them back. Instead it inspired them.
They put in some damn gumboots and made a mark. Maybe they made fifty marks or fifty-five thousand marks before they got where they wanted to be, but they kept leaving their mark.

This year I challenge you, stop seeing yourself as mere players, a pawns on the chessboard waiting for the hands of life to move you. Whatever you dream, whatever you once said you do, or go see. Go do it. Go see it.

You're just a people. And that's the point. Every amazing person who's ever inspired you is exactly that. Just a people. So. Go do it. Go and be people. Be gumboot wearing, stomping, mark-making people.

This year, I dare you. Wear gumboots.

8 comments:

  1. I already have them on and I am doing a little dance. What? You don't know about the gum-boot stomp??? Join me.

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  2. I don't know how to be any other way. (Despite being an introvert by nature!) Something in me refuses to hang back and go unnoticed. I can't take me anywhere.

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    1. I believe that about you. I haven't forgotten your gorgeous energy :)

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  3. So good to see you here again. Love your Gumboots.

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  4. Yes. I'm back. :) my youngest starts school this year. Our academic year starts in two weeks for the year. Can't wait. That's all three at school and finally time to get back to me. I'm good. You? How goes the book?

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  5. How cool, to read your inspiring words again. Welcome back!

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