Perspective

Everyone has had that moment, whether you think so or not, where you kind of judged someone but didn't know their whole story, find out something and think, was I wrong? I've had that moment numerous times. I believe that after walking a mile in someone else's shoes you don't understand, your perspective of them and probably yourself will change.

"Romeo and Juliet" is a love story, considered to be the best love story, and there is a moment as a reader of the play where I was placed in someone else's shoes and thought, maybe that person kind of has a reason to be that way.  Lady Capulet, Juliet's mother, is a drinker and she doesn't stand up for her daughter like in Act III, Scene IV when Capulet flips out at Juliet. Well in Act 1 Scene III, Lady Capulet mentions that she had Juliet younger than how old Juliet is. So, she had Juliet when she was younger than 14, and that's probably why she doesn't really do mother-like things with Juliet. She probably just wasn't ready altogether. Imagine you're a 12 year old girl, going through the process of giving birth, and then raising the child. That's probably why Nurse was hired.

In class, we read a novel "The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time" written by Mark Haddon about a young autistic boy, Christopher Boone and his parents separated. Mr. Boone, his father, was left to take care of the autistic child on his own. That is tiring enough, but add in a job as a maintenance man and the occasional emergency jobs. Later in the book, Christopher then finds out his mother is not dead, his father killed the dog next door, and he lied to him, which meant he couldn't trust him. So he ran off to London to live with his mother. She then had to go a few weeks taking care of Christopher and she then felt how Mr. Boone felt, taking care of an autistic kid while trying to maintain a job. Through this, Mrs. Boone did what Mr. Boone did for a few weeks and saw that, it's hard to take care of young Chris, but it's harder to do that on his own.

My final example is a personal experience, this happened back in fourth grade and it really proves my point because this was a real life situation. Back in fourth grade there was a kid on the playground, he was basically the bully of the playground. He picked on anybody he saw. Even some of the kids from older grades didn't mess with him. One day he decided that I was the perfect victim. I was going through a lot that time though, my dad's uncle passed away and he was a fun guy to be around, my brothers were so annoying at home so when this bully started messing me and asking for a fight, I gave it to him. We both got beat, and for the rest of the year until summer vacation we had those moments where we had our crews at different sides of the room, or in this case the playground, and we always had problems between each other. I guess my friends and I were the first ones to stand up to him and that's why he was always worrying about me. During summer though, I was walking around the neighborhood with my friends and we saw him thrown out the door by an older man. It turns out that he was having problems at home, his dad was really abusive. Imagine witnessing beatings almost everyday and getting beat, and your mother couldn't do anything to prevent it. That's what this kid was going through and he bullied others to make himself feel like he has power over people. We then walked over to him and asked if he wanted to hang with us because after finding out that his dad beat him everyday, with no help, plus knowing that there are a bunch of kids who hate you at school, I said this was enough standing up and it's time to help up. His problems were worse than mine and I started thinking, "Did I really need to blow out and fight back because my brothers were really annoying at home and that my grandfather could finally go to heaven?" This kid had thoughts of suicide everyday and it was the guy who was bullying kids. After befriending him I ended up leaving the next year but my friends now are close with him, and I just hope right now he's okay because if I went through what he did, I probably wouldn't survive all the pain and pressure.

Walking a mile in somebody else's shoes does change your perspective on them. I truly believe in this because not only is it in books, but I had a legitimate real life experience. It made my actions toward someone change from hostile to hospitable. And that's a pretty big change if you ask me.