June 2019
Today I received a beautiful foot massage
with sandalwood oil and, in my usual meander of mullings, I got to thinking
about the words sandal and wood and how they evoked in me a vision
of walking through the woods in brown leather sandals, and then from that vision
an idea for this article on how it feels to walk in the shoes of another. I’ve chosen to write of these
shoes as sandals, because there is a certain innocent simplicity in the wearing
of the latter and I quite like that.
I have been lucky to have had a few
mentors in my life who have shared with me their skills, insights, and
knowledge in a lovely generosity of spirit. They have, effectively laid down a path in their walking, which is a very
Buddhist idea. In this way, they have also shown me how to be a human being and to mentor
others without fanfare. For these things I am profoundly grateful.
But taking the image further, from making
a pathway for me to walk safely following them, to inviting me to wear their shoes, well that takes a lot more
risk on their part.
One of my mentors, a university teacher of
mine, nurtured my interest in the subject of Jungian psychology beyond the call
of duty and, when I was in third year of my first degree, he asked me to be a
tutor for second year students just while he was on leave. That was a big thing
for me. Here the pathway was not just cleared for me, but I had to wear his metaphorical
shoes. It was scary for the 21 year old me, but I made the shoes my own and
really haven’t looked back.
Some shoes, some expectations, seem
impossible to put on and if they are squeezed into, feel intolerable. Such
shoes do not, cannot, fit. If a parent or a teacher or someone with authority
expects us to walk their way without compromise, and without any recognition
that we are not designed for that level of engagement, then we can have years
of guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy. This scenario is quite common in
our society. The macho father demanding his sensitive son work in his
cut-throat world of commerce or the soldier wanting his child to be a fellow
warrier, the intellectual mother demanding her physically talented daughter,
skilled in carpentry, become a fellow academic, the mathematically gifted teacher
demanding a favourite pupil give up dancing for accountancy, and so on. Extreme
mismatches make for great misery. Some people who have felt forced into
occupations and lifestyles suffer enormously with depression and suicidal
thoughts. They’ve internalized the expectations of others and turned against
themselves, causing inner collapse. It is part of my work as a psychotherapist
to ease off the ill-fitting shoes of mismatched expectations and provide
support and encouragement as the client finds their own comfortable shoes to
walk in. Comfort (from the Latin, to strengthen greatly), after all, doesn’t
mean giving in to laziness, but to finding one’s own inner strength and feeling
good in the world.
The shoes we want to wear need to fit us
and to make the journey through life relatively comfortable. A good mentor
knows this and chooses his or her apprentice according to their leaning towards
the lessons the mentor wants to pass on.
Sometimes the shoes are sandals and like
the sandals worn by the person wandering through the woods, there is an easefulness
of being. Just as the essential oil of sandalwood calms, balances, grounds,
clears the mind, so the wearing of the footwear bestowed by the mentor needs to
be calming, balancing, grounding and clearing. The wearer of this footwear
treads lightly but purposefully. It is clear the walker knows where she/he is
going.
