If the Shoe Fits Wear It
The thing about taking a good long hard look at your life is that it can make a person feel regretful or want to compare their life with someone else’s. Now, there might be some merit in that (if I could think of some) but for the most part, I don’t think there is.
I mean, a person could rationalise to walk in someone else’s shoes or to try (at the very least) understand, but really and truly, if you weren’t prepared to go the whole hog and actually live the life, why start to begin with? Could this fascination with ‘walking in someone else’s footsteps’ be nothing more than some do-good voyeurism?
And could we really say we were authentically ourselves if we attempted to walk in someone else’s shoes? Personally, I wouldn’t have thought so, but people do you know, attempt that walk and I suppose they achieve a sense of what it might feel like to live someone else’s life to a degree. But when it’s all said and done I do wonder what they see the point of the exercise as being.
The thing about thoughts like these is that they force me to have a position or not, to have an opinion or not where I might easily sit on the fence. It’s helped me understand that sitting on the fence is rather a tenuous place to be. In a war they say, fence-sitting will get you killed. It’s a sobering thought.
The thing is, that once you begin the walk in someone else’s shoes, who then do you become? Them? Or does walking in their shoes open you up to the possibility of becoming more fully yourself? Interesting question that one. Your thoughts?
