How to Stand In Someones Else's Shoes

Following from last week’s suggestion that the ability to stand in another's shoes is a great achievement, today begins to look at the practical 'how' of how this be approached. The first thing to note is that, we almost all possess the ability. As young children we effortlessly move in and out of others' perspectives, adopting them for our future benefit and gain, internalising them for our future loss and pain. Getting older things can harden, we assume more, thought sediments itself, remaining undisturbed, it becomes viscous, a colloid, gluing us to one perspective, our own, asserted over others. We lose the ability to take the other's view into account, to see where they are, to meet them on the edge of their world, to greet them on the edge of our own. Exploration ceases and we can find ourselves alone with the likeminded, unable to reach out, across the barriers of human thought, to mutual understanding.

Proceeding directly at this point is often to project, to assume, when what is needed is the ability to stop and be, in the face of the other, to get the feel of them, not as we normally feel but as they feel. What marks this 'stop' out is the conscious choice that marks it, it is an arrest in thought, willed, where we stop heading down familiar tracks, where we cease making habitual movements in favour of a free balance and a conscious choice to focus on the other, while being aware of our own tightening into premature movement, which pre-empts a full consideration of the other, in their predicament,in their position, in their being.

Consideration here is a practical matter, it is not just words, although many words have been used to describe it 'bracketing' in phenomenology, 'suspension' by Kelly, 'inhibition' by Alexander and it is Alexander who perhaps gives the most practical instructions for learning here. For inhibition in its most radical form, involves a complete suspension of what has gone before, in favour of a seeing, feeling, controlled mirroring of the other, where sympathy, empathy, appreciation are established in fellow feeling. Fellow feeling, feelings for our fellows, fellowship with others, friendships with others, these are important goods to us and to others. They come with learning to 'stop', to see and to feel with others, if Alexander gives most help here in stopping then Kelly give most help with the understanding that can develop from here. More next time.....