Shoes

"I'd hate to be in their shoes"
"Walk a while in someone elses shoes"

There are a number of versions of this proverb. It is a rather common and popular proverb.
However, I have a few issues about this.

It states that in order to experience someone elses life, you merely need to don a pair of their shoes (or 1 shoe, if they are an amputee). Then you become them.
This implies shoes hold some sort of mystical powers.
But they're only shoes, I hear you say.
That's what the shoes want us to think.
We all have a number of pairs of shoes (or single shoes in the case of the amputees). Each pair serves a different purpose (or, for the shoe-fettish females amongst you, a great number of shoes can serve the same purpose). When we put on our work shoes, we are in a mind to go to work. We put on the sneakers, and before you know it, you're off raising your heartbeat in some wholesome way.
Has noone noticed the shoes manipulating our lives so?

Back to my original disturbance:
What happens if you casually borrow someone's shoes?
Do you become them?
If we walk a way in a borrowed pair of shoes, do we actually walk a way in the state of mind as our cherised shoe-lender?
Can we steal someones identity as easily as just stealing their shoes?

According to century-long past down tradition (if the original proverbs could thus be called), the human race has been keeping all sense of identity and all freedom of choice locked up in its shoes. Once the time of the shoes expires, it is mysteriously metaphysically transferred to the brand spanking new pair of shiny footwear.
Or perhaps the shoes are sold with already implanted personality.
Maybe it is the shoemakers who are actually controlling the entire shoe-wearing world?

This then raises moral and ethical questions about displacing such charcteristics and feelings into the shoes of horses, when they themselves have never been too fond of making and putting on shoes for themselves.
Maybe we should aquire a child from birth and see if it, with no outside influence, ever makes and wears a pair of shoes.

Just another thought to ponder over. Bring it up at your next dinner party.
Start a conversation (oops, is that slogan already taken?).
Some more points of reflection:
- are amputees only half the person (in mind as well as bodily)they once were?
- if stealing one shoe, do you become half-half yourself and the unlucky victim?
- if you wear shoes on your hands as well as your feet, do you become more of a person as you can store more character?