When writing an article, I always try to write about something that I have been pondering on during that week. These days I have been thinking about my parents and what they have taught me. I feel that I always write a little bit about my parents in my articles anyways, but never have I stopped to actually write about them.

One of my best friends once told me, “Family is the only thing you come to the world with, so you must appreciate them, because people come and go, but family is always there.” At that time I did not completely understand what that really meant. But now that I have gone through a lot of things, I finally understand it. My family has always been there for me, no matter who I am or what I’ve done, they have been my support through everything. However, family is more than just my support, they are my life teachers.

When it comes to how to live, family is the primary influence in our lives, even if we don’t plan or want it. College is just a place you go to learn how to make a living; but in most cases, you already go with a specific way of thinking due to your family and background. We can agree that the family is the most influential thing in our lives. There are traditions and habits that everybody in the family follow and you don’t even question why, you just do them and they are already part of your life.

My life today is a result of what my parents, specifically, have taught me. When I say that they “taught me,” it doesn’t mean that they made me sit down and they talked for hours about how to do this or that, or how to talk to people, or how to think about certain things. Their everyday lives were the footprints marked on the path of my life. Kids follow their parent’s passion more than their “lessons” or “speeches” that are backed up with hypocrisy and emptiness. If the lesson that is given is backed up with a life of honesty, then that’s what will result into life in the kids.

Today, I am a college student in America, away from my dear Costa Rican family, and I know that I am still following those footprints that they still leave for me. We might be several miles apart, but our worlds collide when I have to take decisions or when I find myself in critical moments where I don’t know what to do. It’s always a relief when I go back to that path and find that they already had left a solution, an answer, or an advice with their lives for me.

I am totally conscious that my actions, my thoughts, my intentions, my dreams and how I am living my life are the footprints that I am leaving behind for the future generations. It’s crazy to think that I am already backing up the future lessons that I’m going to give to my kids with my own example.

I know what my parent’s passion is. Their passion is to follow Christ and show their love and mercy to everybody. I want what they have, and I want to follow it too.