Abstract
There are different types of footprints that I have made in my life. These footprints symbolize the memories and experiences that I have had. I have made footprints in the snow that have eventually faded away. I have made footprints in the mud that I have had to wash away the dirt. I have made footprints in clay that have molded the type of person I am. My life is full of footprints that I have left. This is a journey of the footprints I have taken that have molded who I am today along with the core influences in my life, how I currently create my path, and where I expect my footprints to continue.
Footprints of Time
“Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived”. This is a quote given by Patrick Stewart. Time is something that is not controllable. What we can control, is the kind of journey that we take. All we can really do is look back at the footprints that were created. Either we can cherish those moments or we bury them. We cannot change the past just as we cannot predict the future. The life I have lived has been a journey filled with great times and hard times. I have had my moments where I have strutted down my path with great amounts of pride but I have also walked down the path with nothing but sorrow. I would like to take you back to the beginning of my journey.
I grew up in a rural area in . My parents and God were my support and strength in developing good character traits. I have three younger brothers who have played their part in teaching me the art of being patient. I believe that one of the key influences to our overall health is the relationship with our family and God. Family is your support while God is your guide. My parents made it very clear the importance of family. Overtime, friends are going to come and go but family and the Lord will always be there. If you have ever seen “Cheaper by the Dozen”, that movie has many similarities to the environment of my house growing up. In the movie, there is a seen between Mark and Tom that reminds me of the many times my Dad has done the same thing.
Mark: “Have you seen my frog dad?” Tom: “Sorry Charlie, er, Nigel, Kyle”. Mark: “It’s Mark”. Tom: “I knew that”. That type of conversation happened many times and always was a good laugh at the dinner table. My parents also stressed the importance of having dinner meals together where we would all catch up on what everyone had been doing that day. There were many meals where we would get my dad to literally fall out of his chair laughing. This would start a chain reaction causing my brothers and myself to imitate my dad which just made it that much for hilarious. We would even have days where we would be assigned to act like someone else at the table, which being my dad was always the easiest to impersonate. My mom made sure that I got all of my food groups in when I had dinner. I usually had just water with my meal because we never really had anything else and I also had to make sure to eat all the food on my plate. After diiner I would help clean up and do the dishes. Another way that they I had healthy meals was that the main part of my meal came from my backyard. My family had 3 cows that were used for the primary purpose for beef. We did a lot of things as a family. When we needed hay, we would all load up in the truck and go get us 20-30 bails of hay. I did not particularly like the cows too much because they were many times where a gate would be left open and it would be my job to go track them down. Feeding the cows was always the one chore that I crossed my fingers I would not get. The method used was a piece of paper drawn from a hat. This seemed to be the only “fair” way for chores to be distributed. Now these cows helped save us money but I also knew that the meat that I was eating had being properly processed and it has been graded as Prime beef that could actually be used in restaurants. It was not just dinner that I had healthy meals. When I started going to school, my mom would make sack lunches for me that were always a well-balanced meal.
Now my father always had a very strong presence about him. He served his time in the military so he was very strict in having me obey him and held high values and morals for me to follow. There were many times where I would not obey him, which caused tension between my father and I. During these times, there was a lot of stress. This was during my years as a teenager where I was very self-centered and put my own interests before the respect of my father. Now everyone in my family had different ways of coping with stress. My father liked to do projects, my mom liked to cook, and I liked to play sports. Sports allowed me release any stress that had been weighing down on me. It was a time where I could work with others all trying to accomplish the same goal, to have fun. I played sports with the same group of athletes and we played the sport because we enjoyed it. There would be times of greatness and there would be times of disappointment. We all cared for each other so any stress from earlier that day would fade away after going out and working with my teammates. The bond that I made with my teammates made me let go of my own selfish thoughts because my perception would change from wanting what I wanted to what the team wanted. It taught me how to look for ways to help “the team”. This could be connected with the buffering hypothesis. There were many reasons why I loved sports but overall it had a direct correlation with decreasing the stress that I had in many parts of my life.
The decision to play sports was actually not made by me. My parents got me involved in sports even before I entered school. I was only 5 years old when I started playing baseball. Now at this age, I probably did not show much interest in playing the sport but it was a step in getting my feet wet. I did not know why I was there. I didn’t know why I was having a piece of wood placed in my hands or why I was having to run to these white squares that brought me back to same place I started. The main thing was that I was learning. When I was in Boy Scouts, I did not know why I had to wear a uniform that everyone else was wearing. The main thing was that I was relating. When I was at home, I did not know why I always had to go outside to play. What was happening is that all of the events that were happening as I was growing up were placing foundations for me to follow. Foundations that later became habits. Habits that were preparing me for the world.
My parents did not allow me to have bad habits. Laziness was not tolerated in the Goodgion household. I had daily chores that I had to accomplish and had to spend a good portion of my day outside when the weather permitted me to do so. My parents later told us that the best investment they made to keeping us busy was the purchase of a trampoline. I would spend hours out on the trampoline creating all sorts of different games for my brothers and I to try out. During the summer, I would put a sprinkler underneath and would stand off the trampoline and try to hit my brothers with water balloons as they were jumping. The games I played were not always injury free. An example of this would be a popular game known as football. We would all stuff ourselves with pillows and have tackle football on the trampoline. This is where I first learned what a broken thumb felt like. I immediately knew after I tackled my brother that something was wrong. In times of trial like this, I would always make a straight line to the one person who I know would save me, my mom. Whenever I needed to be taken care of, I could always count on my mom having the solution.
There was probably not one square foot of that land that I had not stepped on, not a tree I had not climbed, or an animal that had not been found. I grew up spending a lot of time outside because that was what was expected from us by my parents. There were no reasons to be inside unless it was time to eat. There was just more to do outside than there was to do inside. This was not a bad rule even though at the time I thought so. It allowed me to be creative and find alternative things to do. I created a baseball field that was used very often when my friends came over. I had a barn that I turned the loft into a fort that I would play music and have games that I could play with friends. My parents were not wealthy by any means growing up with four kids. What seperated them from many was they knew how to use problem focused coping to manage with the bills, due dates, schedules, appointments, and everything else that was placed upon them as parents. They were responsible with their money. They would save money and not waste it on things that were not needed.
Growing up, I worked hard to please my parents. They taught me the lesson that if I worked hard, it would eventually pay off. I learned quickly that I did not always get what I wanted, when I wanted. When I eventually got video games and cable television (Which took years with multiple letters of requesting), it came with restrictions. My dad would set limits for the amount of time that could be spent watching TV. I could not just spend as much time as I wanted in front of the box. I was usually never able to watch television on weekdays unless Survivor or Monday Night Football was on. When it came to weekends, I had to be outside for most of the day. It was not until the sun went down, that I was given permission to watch television. Then there would be days where he would just say no electronics day and I would have to find alternative things to do. These were all good techniques because it kept me from falling into the habit of laziness or not getting the exercise that I needed.
Junior High I continued to play sports and spend a lot of time with friends. Having a close network of friends was an important stress busting resource. Spending time with friends made it easier to cope with stress. One of the most stressful times of my life happened because of a friend that decided that she wanted to end her life. She was only 15 years old. She was a close friend of mine that always made my day brighter when I saw her. She was extremely pretty and very popular at the school. It was a complete shock to the entire school when she decided to take her parents gun and shoot herself. My mind could not wrap around the idea of how this could have happened. I remember feeling as if everything that was happening was not even real. After it happened, I did not want talk to anybody about it. I had turned to repressive coping to handle the situation. I remember one day just falling to my knees with tears in my eyes and asking God why these things happen. I had always turned to God in times of struggle but it was with his help that I had managed to pull myself together through that hard time.
I had to face another challenging phase in my life with having to go to a new school that was the rival to where all the friends I had made such strong bonds with growing up were going. It was very difficult being put in a school with people who had already established their own groups making me have to prove that I was worthy of being friends with them. Being athletic helped because I became a key player on the sport teams at my high school in football and baseball. This helped me establish beginning friendships. When I turned 16, my father made it clear that I was going to have to start paying for many of my own expenses. I was on my own for buying a car, paying for insurance, gas, or other conveniences that I “wanted”. This made my life very busy in High School. I had to figure out how to manage my time with work, schoolwork, a girlfriend, friends, and my family. I did not see it at the time but my father was teaching me an important lesson in how to be responsible. For the most part, I succeeded. I had multiple jobs throughout high school. I looked at it as an opportunity to get different skills in different work environments to see what I like best. I would have a job for around 6 hs and would then go and try something else. Jobs that I had were umpiring, a ranch worker, part of the Golf Crew at a Country Club, a Cashier, and also started my own yard work business. By my senior year I had to the option of going to lege to play sports or go to e Ozarks. I did not see myself going professional because of a serious neck injury I had my senior year and did not want to go into debt getting out of college so I decided to come to C of O. My parents were always giving me advice on big decisions. I would have sit down meetings with them and discuss actions that I was going to do with my life. I am glad that I listened to their advice because they havn’t let me down with their advice.
Today I create my path by surrounding myself with good people. I have a strong group of friends and family. It is been a struggle trying to balance time with God, work, classes, military, friends, and family but that is part of the developing process of college. Choosing to go into the military has also been a major impact in my life. It has taught me the meaning of discipline, authority, taking action, following instructions, and all the other positive traits that are created through time sacrificed in the military. I continue to see myself succeed as a soldier and also as an American citizen. I will also stress to myself the importance to eating the right foods and keeping my body in the best shape that I am able to keep it in knowing that it has a direct affect on my health 30 years from now. I have taken many lessons that God and my parents have placed in front of me and used them to create the greatest chance for success in my life with the gifts that I have been given.
There is no way to know what the future has in store for me. What I can do is use the past to understand the future. What this means is I can use the information I have from the past to have an understanding of what is possible for being part of my future. With this knowledge, I will be prepared and possibly be able to avoid a situation that has happened to those family members in my past history. The main focus is to understand the expected death rate that is averaged between my mother and fathers side. I calculated and found out that the expected death rate is that of 78 years old. That by itself is a fairly high age. This is an average death age with half being individuals who have smoked or been into heavy alcohol. That tells me that if I continue to avoid these, I can expect to live to be even older than 78. Of those family members that did not smoke or drink heavily, that average death age jumped to 85 years old. The most common cause of death on my father’s side is heart and liver disease and on my mothers side the most common cause of death was heart failure due to old age.
The footprints of my life are only a piece of sand from the mountains of it that God has created. They still are who I am and who I am to become. I will stumble as I have done many times but I will always have the strength to get back up and continue. The journey is long and full of potholes and places where hard decisions will be made, but I will always keep in mind that how I leave my footprints and take my journey, is in the end more important than the destination.
References
Health and Psychology. (2007). A BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL APPROACH (Second Edition). : Richard O. Straub.
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