“Walk a mile in my shoes” – how’s that for us

It’s huge when we get a compliment on how young we are. A friend recently mentioned to me that something I wrote reminded her of a song she would be too young to remember… it was a song (I found out later) that was performed in 1970 (she would have been three years old) towards the decline of the spiraling reign of Elvis. However, the song, like so many others, has for us a chord of truth that gently reminds us.

“If only you could be me and me you, even for an hour,” he says. Before I go to insult you, criticize you and accuse you, I would be walking a mile in your place. I would see, hear, smell, think and feel your world, not mine. Wow, how appropriate would that be? What a wonderful thought to experience another’s world, having that additional information to ponder.

And it’s not just a relevant thing for me to see you negatively, it’s also to see the positive. Imagine the capacity, the potential and the power that I see in you!, when sometimes you see nothing but a failure in yourself. Too often we are blind to all these things, you and me.

Think of Elvis. He would have known a level of personal scrutiny that we will never know. Imagine the specter of humane treatment he faced, or Michael Jackson for that matter, to name a contemporary example. They would have known both flattery and injustice in a realm we could never fathom and can only sympathize with.

We see here the ignorance in a second that leads us to blindness directly out of the way of justice and peace, both within ourselves and externally to others! “Those who are uncomfortable with themselves are unpleasant to others” -William Hazlit. We return to being mirrors of ourselves in the treatment we give to others.

And the crux is this. When we hurt others, we actually hurt ourselves. It can never be otherwise. We never really imagine ourselves being in a worse situation. We hardly ever see through another person’s eyes or think through his mind or feel through his heart.

However, this would only change our perspective forever. And this is the essence of the Golden Rule: “So in everything, do to others what you want them to do to you, because this sums up the Law and the Prophets” -Matthew 7:12 (VIN). On this one principle rests the whole principle of relationship.

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.