We rented a pontoon on Lake Itasca the other day (fyi a great state park in Minnesota). The lake was beautiful. Smooth as glass. The morning chill gave way to the warmth of the sun with the light breeze keeping it from getting too hot. A peaceful ride, with the steady hum of the motor, that gave me time to think.

As we cruised across the lake, I looked back behind me and saw our wake. Clearly, we weren’t going that fast, but the wake went side to side on the still lake.

As we go through life, we leave a wake. Wakes come in all shapes and sizes. I won’t bore you with the obvious metaphors of fast and slow boats, wakeboarding, watching out for canoes, waterskiiing, etc.

But I wonder if we would do things a little differently if we better understood our wake. We all have one. We can’t go through life without leaving one. We probably leave different wakes at different times.

So instead of asking “what’s in your wallet?” like the commercial, maybe we should ask what kind of wake are we leaving.