“If my life is for rent,
and I don’t learn to buy.
Well I desire nothing more than I get,
cause nothing I have is truly mine”
– Dido, Life for Rent

One of my best friends, the longest one in fact since we crossed path more than 15 years ago, asked me to listen to this song prior to my departure. It was apt indeed.

Material things are not permanent, as what we have is not truly ours. We rent if from the universe. We are only here temporarily. So why are we chasing all the material dreams? Why are we obsessed being better than our neighbour? Of course, I cannot deny, in order to stay alive in this temporary life, we still need the basic stuff like food, shelter and safety, and that comes with many material things, but once we passed that comfortably, then what? As I sat on the plane on my long journey to my first stop, I am thinking about this.

What then is permanent?

Then I realize the impressions that we left in people’s heart is permanent. Be it good or bad, hurtful or nice, it will be permanent. Sometimes it is big enough to change the course of someone’s life, sometimes it only affects them for a moment, but nonetheless the impression remains. Span out to a bigger picture, these impressions, however, small it may be in terms of the infinite time and space, will indeed spiral to something of at least dent in the universe due to the laws of the butterfly effect. Whatever impressions you made actually in effect would continue to live on even after you’re long gone, either through the people you’ve touched or the people, they in turn touched, which will continue outwards to a lot of people and onwards to a lot of generations to come.

So what footprints of impressions are you leaving on the people around you now?

Related readings:
The Art of solitude
Death.