I was driving one day on a lane that was moving particularly slow and going even slower by the second. The car I was following was behind another car whose driver can't seem to make up his/her mind. Suddenly the driver in front of me blew his car's horn for sustainably long seconds as the driver in front of it suddenly turned into the next corner street but obviously without turning on its signal light. The same horn blaring driver in front of me then stepped on the gas for a screeching acceleration that smoked his tires on the concrete in an apparent show of disgust and frustration.
I felt the driver's frustration at that exact moment but just as quickly I did a momentary re-assessment. There was still another twenty minutes or so of driving so there was time to think a bit more about it.
The thoughts that came to me were about the driver who turned suddenly: (a) what if the driver was an old person (I was not able to make out if it was a man or woman or young or old) who had difficulty looking for an address or just simply confused about where he/she was going; (b) what if the person, young or old was having a bad day or struggling emotionally about something, etc. So many reasons we couldn't possibly know from a distance. So many circumstances we had no way of assessing without knowing the person. It is exactly - more than we realize or care to admit - how quickly we get frustrated, even ill tempered over something that when all is said and done was about one little thing. Or, in the greater scheme of our entire life that day, it was clearly nothing.
Was the driver in front of me frustrated or angry because he was running late for something? When we come to think about it, if the driving time for the frustrated driver was a total of twenty or thirty minutes, the delay he encountered may have been a mere few seconds. In the overall scheme of timeliness, it was a mere fraction of time. Studies have shown that on city blocks of traffic, drivers who weave in and out, passing cars whenever they can, typically gets ahead by mere seconds over those driving steadily along one lane after twenty blocks, with traffic signals operating normally.
But that is not the point of this musing, of course. It is about, "What if I were in the other person's shoes?" We are talking about the slow driver. It is easy to think of what our circumstances are, but what of the other person's? The truth is that intersecting events we encounter, sketched through with rapid succession of mini-observances we often make conclusions over, are matters we have very little bases to make a judgment over. But we do it anyway.
The cashier at the grocery store who was not too friendly or unbecoming in a business that partly relies on customer relations and mainly on good service to insure repeat patronage deserves our understanding. There are many reasons why. They become clear once we try putting on their shoes.
Let's try just this one pair. "You are nineteen years old. You graduated from high school a year ago. You had ambitions. You did, but they are shelved for now. Your parents divorced two years earlier. Your dad who promised to pay for part of your college tuition reneged on it. He remarried. A younger wife with a child and a career that is not going too well are a few of the reasons your dad was not able to meet his promise. Your mom has never recovered from the divorce and much of the money she makes as a nursing aid goes to alcohol and social activities with her friends.
You left home and now share an apartment with two other friends whose luck in life is not much different from yours. Reluctantly, you applied for this entry level job that pays minimum wage just to get your footing on steady, albeit sometimes shaky grounds, but you promised yourself to get a better one as time goes by. It has been nine months now doing the checkout register. You do every overtime work whenever it's available like re-stocking merchandise or cleaning the storage rooms to increase your take home pay.
You found out this morning that your mom was laid off from work for frequent absenteeism and you know why. She called you about a medical expense she didn't have money for. Your boss just gave you a hard time for being late this morning even though it was the first time it happened.
You went to your station immediately, skipping the company coffee and donuts at the employee lounge. You are allowed fifteen to twenty minutes after clocking in but you were in no mood for chit chat with co-employees".
Friends, if we could just try on her shoes and give it some brief imaginary moments to enter our thoughts, we will have found a narrow conduit to understanding some of the things we encounter that make us lose perspective as to be upset or frustrated at some of the littlest things.
That is what compels me to greet these cashiers by their first names if they have a name tag at every grocery checkout . As you all know, as a caregiver I do all the grocery shopping now. So, I make it a point that these cashiers hear the sweetest sound they'd like to hear whether it is their first minute or the sixth hour on the job - the sound of their first names. It is worth every decibel to hear it come out of a stranger's mouth.
This will not be the perfect answer to world peace. Clearly, we can all come up with all kinds of exceptions or even excuses to not try the other person's shoes. But is it not worth it to at least try it sometimes? More so if the other person has no shoes and we try to walk alongside them. It is estimated that 300 million people worldwide cannot afford to buy shoes.
Each time we are frustrated at not being able to get anything when we absolutely think we need to have it, think of the 300 million. Just think, they'd be happy to try any one person's shoes anywhere. So, whenever we can, as often as we can, let's try the other person's shoes.
"Always put yourself in others' shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person too".
-- Rachel Grady
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