Try Walking in My shoes

These COVID days are a test in lots of different ways. I have had excellent training for this predicament of social distancing when I was a Peace Corps volunteer many years ago. Living in the remotest site for 2 1/2 years set me up for staying at home and filling my day constructively, shifting between work and slow home tasks, gardening to grow food, drawing what I saw around me to keep sadness of missing family and friends and the loss of a life unlike no other at bay etc… (Of course the Peace Corps was also WONDERFUL! 

I have done the personality tests and I've come out as a extrovert.  My sister says I am an introvert.  I'm not sure whether being one or the other innoculates you against the chaos of the moment, though.

It's really easy to look from our personal points of view and to be shocked by how someone else reads a situation or interprets a directive. I'd rather just tend my chickpeas (I sprouted some seeds and now have plants!) But, I am not abjectly poor.  I have space, beauty and a system for being here now. So far I don't think anyone I know has succomed to the virus, either, so whoever you are I just hope you keep well.

Carina's TRY WALKING IN MY SHOES speaks to me about tolerance, empathy and the shadowy world of shoes!  Her window from the abstract to representational echoes that feeling. I remember the heady days of DKult and how it was all about the hair and the shoes!

Carina has captured the world's shared feeling of being in the middle of the unknown: In Covid times we shop online; we bulk buy and then eat piggishly; we long for the things we used to take for granted… like dancing. Some of us might find the novelty interesting and a challenge while others experience something unpleasant.

Thanks Carina! Although these are exceptional times, your imagery makes me smile and also reminds me to consider my neighbour and others not quite like me and to imagine waling in their shoes.