[] Why your mark?

Live the life.

"Every moment in time is just an answer to find what you're here for, what you breathe for, what you wake for, what you bleed for, what you hope for, what you live for."
Mute Math: Progress

Writing in fresh cement.

Sometimes, there's nothing more exciting than the simple things in life.

Exhilirating.
Fulfilling.
Daring.
Sneaky.
Permanent.

Freshly poured cement is hard to resist.
Use a pencil.
Use a stick.
Use a finger.
Use something.
Let them know you weren't scared to take a chance.

Make your mark.

Taking a chance to decorate someones "freshly smoothed" cement means that you might get caught. You might get in trouble - at least temporarily. But regardless, if you can pull it off, you will be a permanent part of the landscape.

Walking my college campus, I cannot help but notice those that have gone before me and "left their mark" in the cement.

Where are they now?

Successful in career?
Building into leaders of tomorrow?
Alive?
Musicians?
Entrepreneurs?
Politicians?
Raising families?
Servicepeople defending our right to write in concrete?
Passed on to the next life?
What was their legacy?

I think the draw to make a mark in concrete stems from our quickly fading lives. It stems from our ingrained desire to know that we were here. And that we made a difference.

We were here. We helped someone. We succeeded. We grew up. We made something of ourselves. We fell but got back up. We gave to the poor. We adopted a child. We ran for office. We did it with passion. We went to war. We beat a cancer diagnosis. We lived. And we died.

"I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Henry David Thoreau

I've cast the die with the placement of a memorial stone to a former high school classmate. A dear friend. What would he have made of his life if it wasn't taken too soon? What will you make of yours?

Our high school had a tradition of a "senior sidewalk" whereby we could pour a new strip of concrete each year and add our graduates' initials to the campus landscape permanently. When our school was demolished to build a new medical school for the Florida State University a couple of us even went so far as to have a discussion about how to pick up the sidewalk and re-plant it at the newly constructed high school across town. It never materialized, but the sidewalk was such a part of who we were as students that we didn't want that to be forgotten and left to be covered by the sands of time.

Use The Sidewalk Project to: Remember someone. Thank someone. Memorialize someone. Honor a mentor. Shamelessly self-promote a link. Recognize a charity. Start the revolution.

Use The Sidewalk Project, this "virtual cement," to become a permanent part of the internet landscape. This site knows no countries, borders, skin colors, races, creeds, preferences, political capital, religions, hairstyles, business objectives, clothings styles, strategery, unified differentiality, automobiles, material posessions, diseases, afflictions, pretenses, cell phones, disabilities, frustrations, joys, pains or anything else that we use to "define" ourselves. It only knows names and one link to what that individual holds dear.

It celebrates our differences and our interwoven existences.

It shows that we have lived, loved and died.

We are only here for but a short time.
Make it great.
Make it special.
Make it amazing.
Make it sincerely.
Make it while reaching out a hand to help someone else up.
Make it even when the odds are against you.
Make it believable.
Make it with passion.
Nothing is accomplished without passion.

Leave it beautiful. Leave it strong. Leave it wiser. Leave it older. Leave your legacy. Leave your DNA. Leave it well.

The Sidewalk Project | Leave your mark.