易地思之, which means ‘ to think for the other’s situation’, in other words, to be in one’s shoes, is a famous expression used by many people for a long time. These four Chinese characters are answers to many essay questions, themes of many books and stories, and a lesson many people gain after precious experience.
In the first part, ‘Spring’, of the film ‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring’ directed by Kim KiDuk, a young boy learns from his mischievous prank he played upon animals. The boy and the monk live in a secluded area surrounded by lake. One day, being extremely bored, the boy starts to catch animals, tie a string around them, and attach a rock to its end. The monk quietly observes him and ties a rock around the boy as well. He tells the boy to release all the animals if he wants to get the rock off of himself. The boy cries sorrowfully when he finds that the fish and the snake he had tied to the stones were dead.
To be able to think in other’s shoes may be the key to many problems we face during our lives. Since we live in a society full of all separate, unique and different people, we have hard time understanding each other. If the misunderstandings deepen, it causes conflicts, protests and sometime s wars. The fact is, though, most of the people know that little understanding is all they need in order to resolve the problems, it isn’t easy to let go of the selfishness and do so.
Two years ago, my parents went to Canada to visit my aunt. I was supposed to go with them, but because of some problems, I had to stay behind. Grandmother was to stay with us for a week until my parents returned, but still I had to take care of my sister. At first, I thought it would be fun, since my sister and I would be able to do anything we wanted without worrying about mom spotting us. However, it was different. I was worried when my sister played computer games until late in the night, when she didn’t wash her hands before eating, and when she cried in the night. I started to tell her to do her homework, wash, and sleep early. Then I noticed that these were the thing my mom and dad had been telling me always. I always pouted at them when they told me to turn off the TV, slammed the door when they told me to do my homework and didn’t eat dinner when they scorned me for not washing my hands. This one week was a unique and precious experience for me, since I thought once more before I disagreed with my parents or was about to say something bad to them when they told me to do something.
Think in other’s situation. This seems simple, but actually is far more complicated than we imagine. I think this is more essential for me now than any other time in my life, considering that I am living with total different entities from distinct backgrounds in the school. I hope everybody recognizes how important 易地思之 is and how much change it could bring.
Wow! I really like this piece of writing!! One of the most important things that I think is to feel what it feels like in others shoes. Through the numerous experiences that I had gone through I definitely could tell that learning to be in someone else's shoes and learning what it feels like to be another person is what you call maturity. Many people do not understand this, and I would say more than half of the adult world does not even know this or even try to follow this. But this is in fact very hard to follow, because one's mind is always controlled by emotions and thus being biased. Especially in this school, where everyone lives together, one of the thing that I seem to see lacks the most is a mutual understanding between those who are not as close with each other. Because they are not as close with each other they do not try or they do not know why someone would choose to do such actions, and thus will make negative comments, judgements, and actions towards that particular individual. This is not only a problem in our school, but in the world and politics. You are one of the few people that I saw think this way and I really appreciate the fact that there are people who think this way. That's the beauty of blogs, you get to express what you want to express.
답글삭제Me too. I loved it. You may like to read, sometime in the future, Emanuel Levinas...:-)
답글삭제What Dennis said. He's doing my job for me here.
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