I Want My Own Shoes

My dad walked downstairs cradling a bag of old shoes and clothes which belonged to my elder brother, dropped them at my feet and said “here you go, try these on.” I had worn up to three pairs of shoes before my dad had finally accepted that they weren’t my size and it would need a couple of years before I would be able to fit in them. So he carried them back up to the attic and told me to try them every few times to see if they would fit.

Some of us are the boy in that story, living our lives but trying to fit into different people’s ideas and fulfil their expectations because they as predecessors of ours had achieved them.

We’re told about how we have big shoes to fill and how everyone has high expectations they expect us to meet cause those that came before set the bar so high. Having the guidance of someone older, which is usually a parent an elder sibling or a relative that has been where you are and succeeded, is a welcome opportunity and their mentor-ship invaluable. It becomes a need to make them proud of us for surpassing their expectations and scaling the bar that they set.

You can’t blame anyone, I mean who doesn’t want to achieve all that he/she wants in life and be lauded by their peers for such a great feat?

The most important thing is that what we want doesn’t get lost in translation along the way, you could confuse what you want for what someone else wants for you because it’s dangled in front of you and it looks good, remember to do it for yourself.

Sometimes we discover this too late in our lives and are already stuck so we go with the flow and hope it grows on us.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we actually want the same shoes, and it’s not an uphill task trying to fill someone’s shoes because they’re what you want and they come with a nice pair of shoe pads so they fit perfectly.

We can’t go around asking people to underperform and dumb down their hope and dreams for us because we fear we will not live up to them or that we pale in comparison to their laurels.

What we can ask for is that people compare us to ourselves and not standards set by others.

We all deserve the opportunity to fail and succeed in our time and at our pace, it’s our right.

Whether we get our own shoes or a gifted one, make sure it fits and wear it proudly.