We last wrote about seeing the this year’s first day of school from two different perspectives, that of a mom sending her middle schooler back to the classroom after summer break and from the other side of the desk, so to speak, that of a college professor heading back into the classroom after a “gap year.”
On the surface, these two scenarios may seem very different, but are they really? We share excitement about what a new school year brings. We share anxiety about school safety. We share the lack of readiness for the disciplined schedule that the school year brings. The truth is that when we truly stop and listen and look from another’s person’s place in life, we realize that our commonalities often outweigh our differences. And in the places where those differences prevail, civil discourse may not change ideas and attitudes, but it does have the potential to cultivate a bit of empathy and understanding. The downfall of humanity comes when we totally lack the ability or the willingness to imagine what it is like to walk in the shoes of another human being.
If you have never experienced a school lockdown situation, either real or simulated, can you put yourself in the place of a teacher responsible for the safety of a classroom full of students? Or, see yourself as an eight year old huddled in the dark corner of a classroom terrified that they will never see mommy and daddy again? Or, in the trembling body of a parent wondering if their child’s classroom is “the one.” If one has even a tiny empathetic bone in their body, the fact that many support gun control in this country should be evident.
If you have never worried about where you will find your next meal or lay your head at night, consider yourself fortunate. Think about how different your life would be if these things were daily concerns for you. For more people than most are aware, this is real life.
A favorite book of ours is The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. In this story, when a little girl gets angry, her finger starts to tingle and turns red. When she points it at the source of her anger, magic starts to happen. There is certainly much room for misuse of “power” in this scenario, but Dahl does not take the story in that direction. Rather, he teaches empathy by using the little girl’s magic finger to literally put characters in the shoes, or webbed feet, of others.
The little girl first uses her magic finger to turn her teacher into a cat after the teacher calls the girl stupid for misspelling the word cat. With a pointing of the tingling red magic finger, right in front of the eyes of an entire class, the teacher begins to grow whiskers, ears, and a bushy cat tail. Suddenly, this educator receives a firsthand lesson on what it feels like to be laughed at by an entire room of students.
In the second incident in The Magic Finger, the little girl is upset by the doings of the family next door. A father and his two sons are avid hunters. After seeing them come home with ducks and a deer that they had shot, she is filled with anger and points her magic finger at them. The entire family of four, even the mom who was not a hunter, wakes up the next day to discover that not only have they shrunk, but their arms have been replaced by wings. And four ducks, who had circled them the day before as they returned from their hunting expedition, were now giants.
At first the children and parents were excited by the fact that they could fly. While the family was out soaring in the sky, the large ducks took over the their home and the family of four now found themselves homeless. They quickly realized that they needed to build a nest. After working hard gathering sticks, leaves, and feathers for a cozy “home” at the top of a tree, wind and rain came and the family experienced firsthand how scary it is to live outside in the elements. They also discovered how difficult it is to find food and eat with no hands. As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the next morning they awoke to see the four giant ducks on the ground below their nest, three of them pointing shotguns directly up at them. The mom cried down, “You can’t shoot my children!” The giant mama duck responded with, “Why not? Your family shot six of mine yesterday.” With that, the father started bargaining with the ducks, begging them not to shoot and promising never again to hunt. His word was good enough for the larger-than-life ducks. The family came down from the tree, grew back to their normal size, their wings disappearing and arms returning to normal. The giant ducks also shrunk to normal duck size and returned to their familiar home back in nature. Not only did the human family destroy their guns, they also changed their last name from The Gregg family to the Egg family to show respect for and solidarity with the ducks.
On the surface, The Magic Finger may be seem to be about guns, but it is about so much more. It’s about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, or nest. It’s about seeing and feeling life from a different perspective. It’s about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. It is about empathy. What would the world be like if people had to walk in the shoes of others, even if for only a short time, experiencing all that comes with being in that place?
Idealistic thinking likes to believe that our world would become a more understanding, compassionate, empathetic, and loving place. Since none of us can put a magic finger to the true test, we’ll just have to put ourselves in the place of Roald Dahl’s character, see life from her perspective and wonder what living in her world, one where we each have a magic finger, might be like.
The turning point in the story of The Magic Finger is when the humans were forced to listen to the duck’s perspective. Doing this changed them and changed life around and between them. Thats what this world needs today. Not totally conformity, just a little more compassion and understanding than we have right now.
Imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes. What are their fears? Their worries? Their joys? And most importantly, how are you changed by seeing from a different perspective?