Walk a mile in my shoes…

“Walk a mile in my shoes” is a cliche beyond repair, I agree. It is also one that seems to have lost its popularity rapidly since long before I care to remember. With the holidays coming soon, I can bet anyone that the “grossness” factor of our society is about to rear its ugly head once again. But I am going to tell you how you might be able to avoid falling for this nasty and easily-adopted point of view. “Walking a mile” can be like a basic mental exercise for your soul.

Aside from the obvious reasons for me to tell you why you should “walk a mile” today, I want to encourage you to learn to “walk a mile” mentally and emotionally around the block. By this, I quite literally mean that you should stand on a sidewalk, wait for someone to pass, and watch them from the time they’re in sight to the time they are gone. (Try not to be too creepy about it; go for a casual stroll!) And in this time that you are watching this person, you should try your very best to imagine what they are seeing. Concentrate on their perspective first, what they can see with their own eyes. Imagine you can see down the bridge of their nose, and your feet pass, one after the other, across your belly line. You can hear and feel the breath in their lungs, inflating and exhaling. The warm buzz you emit as their heart pumps you along the sidewalk; the sidewalk across from where you’re watching them.

Imagine the terrain they are walking on, whether it is cracked and uneven, or flat and safe. This way you can begin to feel their step, the confidence with which they walk. If it is wet, they are cautious.

Imagine carrying their weight. Imagine wearing their clothes. Imagine feeling someone from across the street watch your every step from the time you see them to the time you leave, and choosing not to look over.

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I feel like these are some of the most basic and fundamental ways to begin to understand art and an artist’s perspective. Many fantastic artists and songwriters and performers are so accustomed to tapping into these feelings and emotions that they barely recognize when they are doing it anymore. It is that fundamental.

From there, you go on to more advanced levels of understanding and imagination. You can choose to project where they are going or coming from. What they’re thinking, or what’s blasting through those iPod earbuds they’re listening to. There are an uncountable amount of events, feelings, issues, pieces of knowledge, people, places and doughnuts that have an unmeasurable influence on our daily lives. And there are so many of us!

Well here is one artist that draws a wonderful moving picture, and it paints insight in to so many different perspectives in such a short time. This woman, Kseniya Simonova, is a Ukrainian artist who uses her unique perspective and skills to interpret Germany’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.