Sometimes I see a picture of someone and start to wonder about their whole life. Immersing yourself in another person’s shoes is a fascinating challenge.
I know the old saying suggests walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. But is that really enough? I guess it depends on your intent and what you are trying to get out of the experience.
Understanding A Position
If you are trying to understand someone’s position on a topic, it could be a little more complex than you think. Most topics, at their most general, can be distilled down to a binary option. However, as you dig deeper into the detail, there can be dozens, or even hundreds, of nuanced positions.
Just as a person can be summed up in one word, it doesn’t really give you a good understanding of them. A brief bio is more helpful. An obituary can sum up an important figure in half a page of a newspaper. But these are mere snippets from a person’s life. These do not usually fully inform you of how they got to their current way of thinking on various topics.
So this immersion perspective comes from trying to understand a person more fully. A person is constantly absorbing and assessing information which allows them to make minor shifts in perception. Perhaps we need to understand all of these moments of shift to fully appreciate where someone is coming from in their discussion.
Time To Understand
Let’s say the main influencing time in a person’s life could be distilled into one accumulated hour per week. So one hour, times 52 weeks, for a 50 year old means 2,600 hours of influential moments to review. To do so, at a rate of 40 hours per week, would take over one year!
Immersing yourself in another person’s shoes may not be practical. However, we can be kind and listen. People are where they are based on their own experience. This includes all the formal and informal education, and training, they have received in their entire life.
Berating a person for their current opinion, based on their personal journey so far, is not helpful. Understanding how they have arrived there allows you to help them consider alternative views.
Try understanding people a little more today. Listen to their view and allow them to have it. People are often more open to considering a new perspective when it is presented openly as an option rather than in a coercive way.