Being told that “it could be worse” really is no help at all.
Of course it could be worse, without a doubt there are people in way worse situations than I will ever be; it is not up for debate that people are enduring hardships and terror, disaster and devastating circumstances. By that I don’t mean being voted from a TV show.
However.
I am not walking in their shoes and neither are you. You are walking in your shoes.
Today your shoes may not feel like yours, they may not look like your feet because you never chose those shoes.
One time when I was particularly slim on the financial front I was given a pair of second hand shoes. I had stretched myself to buy my first home and several years later found myself out of a job. The bank helpfully welched on the insurance and left me to cover the mortgage on income support (there’s a misleading name if ever there was one) whilst also trying to pay everything else.
These shoes were old fashioned when I was born and had reappeared into the world to be given to me. I think they were worn by Burt Reynolds at the height of his fame. Anyway, I had new heels fitted to them and polished them up but they were just too ugly to even be retro. The months that I spent wearing those shoes until cash flow was restored were very uncomfortable; it didn’t help to know that children in the sub continental world had no shoes, I didn’t live there.
Life has a way of thrusting us into circumstances that we would most definitely never choose. Sometimes it is a sudden change like my unemployment which came completely unexpectedly. That silent tap on the shoulder and motioning towards the office where an envelope is already waiting with your name on it; three minutes that change your life.
Other times you drift from a great situation into a dreadful one.
All is good until one tiny thing changes the course by one degree, you don’t notice a one degree change but give it a few years and the course direction shift is glaringly obvious. It takes a good deal of retrospective thought to trace back to the moment where things started to deviate but by then it is too late. If you are fortunate enough, it can be rectified.
In all of the vagaries of our lives, regardless of if they are self inflicted or come upon us from outwith ourselves there often comes a point where we face a loss of hope.
Some of us are more prone than others to dipping this low. I often bounce when I reach the bottom of the resource barrel and bounce enough to see a solution. It is at this point the thrill of hope surges into my being and I realise that this thing isn’t over.
For a lot of us the bounce doesn’t always happen.
You land with an unceremonious thump on the bottom of the barrel and remain there for an indeterminate period of time.
That is usually when the cheer up brigade step in with the well intentioned support.
But these aren’t your shoes, someone slipped in and put them on you.
It takes as long as it takes, but we need to begin to untie the laces and look for our own shoes again so that we can push for the change once more.
Today, let the possibility that things can change give you even a sniff of the fragrance, however distant, that there can once again come to you the thrill of hope.