understanding from experience?
putting yourself in someone else's shoes may sound... a little too much of a cliché.
but then again, how often have you "put yourself in someone else's shoes".
not often i presume?
as much as you might have ever thought of wanting to. it just never pops into your head when the moment calls for it, does it? everything else in the world distracts the mind for so long, the thought never occurs to you until you think back on a certain point in time where you should have stopped to think, and put yourself into those shoes, then consider what actions to take regarding how it might affect the-person-in-this-case. by then you probably might have already done the exact opposite of what you should have done, having not stopped to consider your actions. and now while pondering on that point in time, you regret you did not think enough.
sometimes terrible things happen to people you care for. you then feel empathy, you are then unconsciously put into that person's shoes, like it or not. you feel as that person crumbles inside while crying in anguish. this feeling is so potent it affects you. it's like you've become a lesser form of that person. you may not be everything that person is, but for that temporal moment, you feel like that person does, think like that person does, and you cry like that person. all this while, unwittingly in that person's "shoes".
Correct me if i'm wrong. but is it only grief and sorrow that can trigger this motion of feeling for a fellow human being? is it desolation and despair that brings you closer to one another? is it only sorrow that brings people closer? for if it is, the world is probably headed to one filled with melancholy before it can ever be happy.
do you have to be in the dumps before you can feel joy? do you have to lose to gain?