Don't Expect to Understand My Journey, You Have Not Walked In My Shoes
Don’t expect anyone to understand your personal journey if they have not had to follow the same path. They have not followed the same trajectory. They haven’t walked in your shoes, nor contemplated life from through your point of view. No one can hope to completely and thoroughly understand everything about you, because that is impossible.
What other people think of you is their reality, not yours. Other people do not know your story, your personal history, the path you have taken. They cannot live in your skin. They cannot feel your memories. All of these factors are very important when it comes to taking care of your emotional health. Therefore, it is important to avoid giving credit to the unfounded criticisms and judgements of others.
You must also be aware of the fact that even you can’t always completely understand the path your life has taken.
Whoever judges my journey is welcome to walk a mile in my shoes
When we believe what others say we can become someone we are not. This happens because we end up subconsciously wanting to please them. If we do this, we can end up sacrificing that which defines us. Keeping this in mind, we must realize that when we worry about what other people think of us, we lose time and energy.
Nevertheless, other people generally think about us much less than we think they do. Although we may think that we are the object of their stares, it is likely that what we do is not actually that relevant to those around us.
Therefore, we should try to live naturally. We should honor and acknowledge what we feel. We should try to tune in to ourselves. In the end, our path is unique, and we are the only ones who have taken it.
Live your life the way you want, not the way others want you to live it.
What are people who criticize others like?
Behind a person who passes judgment and who destructively criticizes others, there are certain problems or personal characteristics. These traits lead the person to take out their “discontent” on other people. A few characteristics are:
- Low self-esteem: People with low self-esteem use criticism to maintain control of their social position or even as a way to reach an apparently better position.
- Emotional damage: It is possible that these people do not even realize that they have been hurt, humiliated, or abandoned.
- Lack of empathy: There are times in which empathy can simply evaporate and people can become enveloped in a kind of self-defense that justifies the cruelty of pretending to be “innocent”. The person fills in their own emptiness by criticizing and passing judgment without really thinking.
At any rate, it can be said that jumping to conclusions about others is an innate characteristic of human beings in present day society. This is due to the fact that doing this can sometimes be adaptive and can protect us from certain dangers that relationships can bring with them.
However, generating ideas or images quickly about others or about ourselves can lead us to commit disastrous errors. We sometimes pay a great emotional price for these mistakes. Therefore, we should manage our impressions and reflect before we commit an injustice.
When we don’t even understand ourselves
Sometimes we cannot even understand ourselves. However, we cannot avoid requiring that others are sensitive to our feels, thoughts, and desires.
Considering this, we can never be exactly certain that we know what others are feeling. We should not judge others and we should not allow their judgements to rule us. Similarly, this should help us to keep in mind that it is not possible for others to see the world as we see it. Our experiences are only our own.
Therefore, when we don’t even understand ourselves, we must stop and take a moment to think, to review the path of our life, and to slow down our steps until we make our way back to our path.
The good side of this is that not all is lost. In other words, the more disconcerted we feel, the greater the probability that we will have to put back together the puzzle of our life. We must always remember that we are the only ones who can put a value on how comfortable our own shoes are on our own feet.