May 31, 2015

Walking In Their Shoes

We watched Adam Sandler's movie, The Cobbler this evening. Not your typical Sandler nasty-slapstick!

The cobbler stumbles on an old machine in the basement of his shop to re-sole a pair of shoes because his modern machine breaks. He tries the repaired shoes on and mysteriously and magically turns into the owner of the shoes. It's still the cobbler on the inside, his virtues and integrity, only his physical appearance changes.

He 'walks' into the lives of various characters, visits their homes, witnesses their lifestyles.

If you found yourself in that magical cobbler shop with, oh, let's say 10 pairs of shoes, who's shoes would you like them to belong to. Who's life would you like to walk a mile in?

I would love to try on a pair of President Obama's shoes. What would it be like to have the weight of the free-world on your back? What are the things that he knows now that he is in office that he didn't know prior to stepping in?  How does it feel to have half of the government representatives throwing you under the bus every chance they get?

Michelle Obama's shoes would be interesting, too. She has all of her own challenges plus the stress of watching her beloved trying to move mountains while the Republican party pushes back.

Keeping in the realm of government, donning a pair of  Sonia Sotomayor's pumps (and black robe) would be an inspiring adventure. To be the first latino woman to sit on the Supreme Court, to see how she is treated, how she makes her decisions, how she relates to the other judges...now that is what I'm talking about!

Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava might have a pair of leather Berluti's in need of new soles. Slipping into them to wander through his studio would tickle me pink, just like his Sundial Bridge during Think Pink week.

Dr. Anthony Atala heads the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina where organs (kidneys, livers, bladders) are created to help heal thousands. As long as it is not a day where major decisions have to be made, traveling around his world would excite me to no end. To observe organs being built from scratch, knowing someone's life would be saved because of it; Wow!

If wearing the shoes could actually make one think like the owner, I would give my eye teeth to slip into novelist, Michael Chabon's slippers. He is one of the most celebrated writer's of our time. I'd want to know his process, his thinking, his inspiration.  Nevermind the shoes, I would just like to sit with him for an hour or two or six and talk....no, just listen.  Maybe he could squeeze his feet into my black pumps and look over (edit) my novel!

Aung Sang Suu Kyi spent 15 years in house arrest for her pro-democracy campaigning in Burmese. She was quoted, "In societies where men are truly confident of their own  worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued."  What must it of been like to be restricted to your home for 15 years for speaking your truth? 


Another author, J. K. Rowling, would definitely be on my list. Oh, to play with her imagination!

I doubt that many of you have heard of Margaret Lowman. She is an explorer or trees. Many of you that know me personally, know that some of my best friends are trees. Naturally (pun intended) I would want to live in her world, high, high up in her world.

Finally, there is Frosty Woodridge, a man, who penned the book "How To Live With A 21st Century Woman."  The short description of book from Amazon (and, I would imagine, from the book's cover states, ""How to Deal with 21st Century American Women teaches men from all walks of life how to understand and adapt to the evolving male-female paradigm shift occurring at every level of American society. Today, women run companies, become school principles, military generals, police chiefs, corporation CEOs and dozens of other power positions where they make more money and give orders to male employees. It’s no longer exclusively “a man’s world.”

I'd like to walk around in his world for just a little bit. It seems strange that a whole book could be written about how to "deal" with my gender!

So, what about you? If you were going to walk a mile in someone's shoes, who would you choose?

1 comment:

  1. Hmmm....
    Perhaps Sylvia Earle. Gerald Ford. Arnold Stang. Kant or perhaps Locke. Eleanor Roosevelt. Amy Chan. My wife Mary.
    Lots of others about whom I'm curious but this'll do for now.

    ReplyDelete

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