Day 12: Barefoot
We rarely wore shoes growing up.
Before I got into skateboarding at 11, one of the only times I’d wear them was when I was playing sports.
It was normal for us to have calluses on our feet. My dad wore shoes even less than us and his feet became thick and tough like moccasins.
And it wasn’t only my family. If you lived in Hawaii, you just didn’t really wear shoes. Simple as that.
After all, you didn’t need to. You’re on the beach half the time. And the rest of the time you just wear slippers (i.e. “flip-flops” or “thongs” depending where you’re from). Easy on, easy off. No fuss.
One of the things I noticed when I moved away and started wearing shoes more often, was that I wasn’t feeling the ground anymore.
The grass in the park. Puddles after the rain. Gravel in the driveway. A smooth, freshly paved street. Mud between your toes.
Wearing shoes all the time, my feet grew soft. they forgot the many textures of the earth.
A friend from the mainland once visited me at home near the beach. He wasn’t used to going barefoot.
We walked from my house down the road all the way to the ocean with no shoes. We had to walk slow, since his feet weren’t used to the different terrains. Wood chips, a sun-baked road, loose pebbles and sand can hurt if you’re not used to them.
But he loved it. “I can feel so much!” And he didn’t wear shoes the rest of the trip.
When I started moving to different cities for work every year and my growing anxieties kept me more and more often indoors, I realized that on a personal level, I was going through the same thing my feet were.
If I stayed in my room, it didn’t matter where in the world I was. I was barricaded, shielded from the outside world. I didn’t get to know the people, I never saw the city, I didn’t know what the sky looked like or what the air felt or smelled like. I didn’t know what kinds of songs the birds sang in that part of the world. And if I left, having stayed in my room, it’s like I have never been there at all.
And my feet were going through the same thing. Wearing shoes, they were cut off from the ground beneath them. They didn’t know where they were. It didn’t make any difference if it was hot or cold or wet or dry. Through it all they were shielded, wrapped in a comfortable cocoon, and never exposed to the outside world.
Safe, yes. But sheltered.
Sometimes we really do need to block out the outside world. Sometimes that’s the only way we can think, the only way we have any chance to focus and get things done.
But how often do we block out the world around us simply because it’s more comfortable, and because it’s what we’ve been raised to do?
The world is a rich and deep and exciting place. How much of it do we miss because we’ve never thought to take off our shoes?