Put yourself in their shoes

Reader question:

Please explain “put yourself in their shoes” in this sentence: The best way to understand someone is to put yourself in their shoes.

My comments:

“Put yourself in someone else’s shoes” is an idiom that means if you imagine yourself to be in another person’s position, good or bad, you may understand how they feel, good or bad, or why they have done what they’ve done.

This idiom derives from the fact that a pair of perfectly fitting shoes for someone may not fit another person as perfectly. So, literally, only if you put on another person’s shoes can you feel how it is to walk in them.

Metaphorically speaking, “their shoes” stands for other people’s position or plight. A local boy is detained by the police for a petty theft, and one of his pals might privately say to himself: “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes now”. That is, he doesn’t want to be jailed for stealing.

By trying to “put on their shoes”, we try to imagine ourselves in their situation, by seeing things from their point of view, by thinking about how we would want to be treated if we were them.

Harper Lee, of course, expressed this idea best in To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

Alright, here are media examples of how other people’s shoes feel:

1. A Wilbraham man made a life or death decision to stop and save the life of a complete stranger. Now he's being hailed a hero.

Davin Robinson was headed to his vacation home in Maine on Friday. On his way through Portsmouth, N.H. he spotted a man ready to jump from a bridge to his death into a river below.

Robinson pulled over and sprang into action.

“I said ‘If he’d just give me a hug,’ so he reached up to put his arms around me. Once I had him in a bear hug, I was able to pull him back over the railing,” he said.

Police have called Robinson a “hero.” The 50-year-old said he hopes that anyone in his shoes would have done the same thing.

- Local man hailed as a hero by police, March 8, 2010.

2. “Tiger’s perfect day,” read the headline above Rick Reilly’s piece for ESPN.com and the consensus among the US press would certainly suggest that Tiger Woods’s return to golf at the US Masters had been a triumphant one. Making his first competitive appearance since details of his extra-marital affairs emerged, Woods hit a four under-par 68, his best opening round score at Augusta.

“Turns out, he is what they say he is,” wrote Bill Plaschke in the LA Times. “He is what they shout. He is what they crave. He is what they believe. No matter how much his sleazy behavior has betrayed everything he claimed to be, Tiger Woods is still The Man.”

Woods’s demeanour was being watched almost as closely as his shots, with several writers remarking that he seemed to be doing his best to keep a lid on his emotions. “His full charm offensive – still in hyper mode, still somewhat phony – was active,” noted CBS Sports’s Mike Freeman. “He smiled more. He engaged the gallery possibly more than ever in his career. There wasn’t a single hole where he cursed. Those were the ways he looked different.”

Reilly hailed Woods for keeping a lid on his emotions so successfully. “That 68 is preposterous and historic and unthinkable when you put yourself in his shoes for one minute. Imagine the emotional bloodshed he has gone through, albeit self-inflicted. He not only hadn’t played a tournament the entire year, nor faced the public after five shameful months, but he was trying out a whole new serenity-now personality on the course.”

- ‘Tiger Woods is still The Man’ - US press reaction to the golfer’s return, Guardian.co.uk, April 9, 2010.

3. Few have had a bigger influence on today’s musical artists than Michael Jackson.

Younger singers, from Justin Timberlake to Usher and Chris Brown, have emulated his dance moves, his look and his sound.

He was, for many, the ultimate performer.

“[His influence] feels like something that is instilled and embedded in anyone who wanted to create anything musically,” said Marsha Ambrosius, one half of the duo Floetry that wrote the single “Butterflies.”

That single appeared on Jackson’s 2001 “Invincible” album.

“He will always be the King of Pop, and no one will ever be able to fill those shoes with those shiny socks and that glove,” Ambrosius said.

- ‘King of Pop’ was major influence on younger artists, CNN.com, June 26, 2009.