Stillness 8-13: Sometimes we get way too caught up in ourselves and our overly-familiar perspective. It’s as though we were little entities peering out of two tiny windows in our head, and trying to figure out what’s what. When we were teenagers this was especially the case: We imagined everyone noticing us, judging, criticizing us. It’s not really that teens think the world revolves around them, it’s that they can’t easily be objective about situations, friends, and their own roiling emotions.
It gets easier when we’re older and our thinking capacities develop so that we can make sense of someone’s comment that seemed hurtful at the time but turns out to have been a misunderstanding, or to have an awareness of other peoples’ miseries and insecurities.
My mother said to me once when I was nervous about going to a party: “Just remember everyone in the room is more nervous than you are. That way you’ll be able to help them—and that will make you less nervous.”
She’d been at one of the many glamorous parties she and my dad used to go in New York City in the 1950s, and had noticed a stern-looking, older woman standing alone, her back to a wall, looking somewhat unapproachable. She recognized her at once as the wonderful—but painfully shy—Eleanor Roosevelt. All the other guests were chatting and laughing around the bar and on the couches, far too intimidated to talk to her. But my mother’s heart went out to her, and she immediately went over and did what she could to make her feel more at ease.
It really helps to get out of ourselves and our small heads and open our hearts to imagining how someone else might be feeling or experiencing the world. It’s not just a good idea for the sake of wise enlightening things like compassion and generosity. It also makes us feel better—it puts things into perspective and reminds us that we are part of a much greater whole and that we are all connected.
Here’s the last verse from the 1895 poem by Mary T. Lathrap called “Judge Softly,” whence the well-known phrase “walk a mile in his moccasins” became popular (although the origination of the adage is probably older than the poem):
Remember to walk a mile in his moccasins
And remember the lessons of humanity taught to you by your elders.
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave
In other people’s lives, our kindnesses and generosity.
Take the time to walk a mile in his moccasins.