Ashiato. Legacies we tred.

Allow me a moment to be poetic.

My son's recently learnt 'ashiato', which is the Japanese word for 'footprint'. And like any kid learning a new word, he proudly says it a lot. He loves to step in water or see imprints of his feet (and other animals or items).

Admiring his ashiato.

And the more I hear it, the more I love the word.

足跡. Ashiato.

‘Foot traces’, basically.

The traces after your feet.

What remains after your feet have been there.

It feels more poetic than 'footprint'. Like ghosts' lingering memories in that place.

We're all looking for ways to make our life mean something. Proof that we were here and with a good reason to be so.

We have to choose what we want to leave behind, because it's through our actions (and the phantoms of our actions, our ashiato) that people will see and remember what we've done.

Who we were.

I'm reminded of this in two parts recently. One being a more obvious nudge.

I recently tabled at the Indie Book Markets for the Sunshine Coast Hinterland Writer's Festival. (SCHWF).

Often, at events, I tend to go to individual Dymocks bookstore signings or more genre related events like fantasy or nerd conventions. Places you expect to see a fantasy author.

But SCHWF is a mixed genre book event, and so I met more authors of other genres for the first time in a long while. Particularly memoir authors.

We don't tend to meet memoir authors in nerd events like Comicon, but there were a few at SCHWF, and so it was interesting to catch up with them. Hear a little about their stories. Interesting people with stories of their own lives that they wanted to leave behind for others. Either to inspire people like a woman who bikes around Australia with her dog, or to help others to overcome hard challenges and move through healing.

And I met an old boy writing about his life from the Second World War. A unique story these days, and with so many important lessons to learn. So few who fought in the war are around now, and yet there is so much we can learn from their stories about empathy, character, peace, and the horror of war. Things really on these books can teach us, and to help us know how to proceed better in the future, as the sole legacies to these people moving on.

All things important to be documented. Legacies these authors are leaving behind. And of course people like to tell their stories.

It's proof they were here. That they existed.

My second point of thought recently on ashiato ...

Some here may not realise I dabble in song writing.

Nothing released. Nothing made.

It's more for myself, I think.

One struck me because of the reflections that it's hard to know how to move forward in life sometimes. (Can you tell I've been brooding a bit about an unknown future?)

Footsteps lay behind us, creating a trail made by both ourselves and our ancestors. Footprints in a path that lead to where we are now. We continue on the trajectory they give us. Like my dad moving down from the North to find better work in the South, and so I was born there in a place with more opportunities than he would have. And he would have been given a better trajectory by his mother and the life she built for him.

I picture it like a path, a line, or footprints glowing and lit up behind us.

But in front of us? No guidance or path on where to walk because we have to discover that for ourselves. So it's dark. Can't see.

"I walk the unbeaten path."

This is a scroll I made for my little bowl of magical scrolls to take to events.

It's all we can do. Walk an unbeaten path.

Ashiato.

We can't step back into the footprints and path we know. That's gone. That's the past. We can't go forwards by stepping back into history.

We can only move forwards with courage, knowing we are stepping forwards the best we can with the information we have at the time.

Chase your best path forward. Watch the footprints you make as you go, and reflect on the legacy and impact you make as you go.

There is no way we can move without making an impact, after all. Your journey impacts the world and people around you, so take care.

And don't fear the future.

It's an unknown path forward, but that's kind of the fun part. You can decide how you want it with each new step you take.

And then remember your ashiato. The ghosts of your memory in that place.

These are what remain after your feet stood there.