IF THE SHOE FITS…
“To live is to write one’s credo, every day, in every act. I pray for a world that offers us each the gift of reflective space, the Sabbath quiet, to recollect the fragments of our days and acts. In those recollections we may see a little of how our lives effect others and then imagine, in the days ahead, how we might do small and specific acts that create a world we believe every person has a right to deserve.” (Arthur Frank)
I confess to having difficulty choosing a theme for this week’s blog. Perhaps having had a month-long hiatus was like the vacation from which one has trouble returning to work. In back-to-school days we were often asked to write an essay on what we did during summer vacation. One September, in grade two I believe, I wrote about my parents’ unwittingly leaving me behind in the mountains during an outing in which they turned us four children loose to look for the large pine cones out of which which my mother wanted to make Christmas decorations.
We were told to listen for three honks of the car horn and — once heard — return to the parking spot. I didn’t hear anything, so eventually wandered back to the designated spot, only to find the car gone. They’d somehow managed to leave without me! Woe was me!
I shortly encountered other hikers, two couples about my parents’ ages, who gently enquired as to what I was doing out there all by myself. To my garbled tale of being left behind, they quietly debated taking me to the police station in Banff — where I staunchly refused to go — when my dad roared up in our family Oldsmobile, flush with embarrassment, angst and apologies.
Now from this great distance I can do something I’ve been practicing recently, which is to put myself in the other person’s shoes. Imagine a harried day towards the end of summer vacation, two parents trying to keep their six, eight, ten and twelve year-old children occupied. And show them a different slice of life. (We have ten grandchildren. I get it.) And something else I get, at this remove, is a sense of how my parents must have felt upon discovering that I wasn’t in their vehicle. As later recounted, my brother asked me a question from the front seat of the car and, getting no response, turned around to discover I wasn’t in the back seat with my two other siblings. One thing I’m glad of is not being there to witness my parents great shock and chagrin (after all, it’s ME they were missing) as they careened back down the highway to find me. One might wonder why an eight year old was left unattended in a National Park forest, but those were simpler times, and bears, cougars, lynx and the like were perhaps deemed less of a threat. Not to mention the immensity of the forest itself!
That this is what my mind conjures up, at this great remove, I now can’t imagine my parents being any less, and probably a good deal more terrified than I was at the time. No doubt, my own anxieties were assuaged by an imminent ice cream cone or such like, while my parents might’ve needed something stronger to settle their nerves. In retrospect, this begs the question of both how to put oneself in another’s shoes, and once there, how best to manoeuvre. Being fond of looking up words in the dictionary, I arrive at this definition of manoeuvre:
“a movement or series of moves requiring skill and care.”
Leading an examined life helps me do just that. It means taking the time to observe and reflect on my actions, and particularly my reactions to the people and events around me. And try to see things from their POV. Through a process of trial and error, with the aid of courses and readings, tracking my footprints, emotions and feelings, I begin to see patterns and ways I can grow and change. As Arthur Frank was quoted in an essay on what it means to be human:
“He talks about credos or aphorisms and calls them statements not of principle but of process. This process, he says, is one of perpetual reflection on how we live our lives, with the purpose of understanding how our choices have made us who we are, and the end of choosing more wisely, informed by a vision of who we might become.”
The option of becoming a better version of myself, tempered with a healthy dose of self-acceptance, is what animates my journey through life.
That and a sixteen ounce chai latte with steamed oat milk and cinnamon. Extra hot.