The Little Book of Stoicism

Practice 49

Put Yourself in Other People’s Shoes

“When you face someone’s insults, hatred, whatever . . . look at his soul. Get inside him. Look at what sort of person he is. You’ll find you don’t need to strain to impress him.” – Marcus Aurelius

We’re often quick to judge.

The father on the train who doesn’t tell his loud kids to be quiet—we say he doesn’t have the faintest idea of being a father.

The driver who runs all the red lights—we’re quick to judge him as a jerk.

The mother who tells us off at the playground—we think she’s completely mad.

Now, in most cases, we don’t know much about the other person, and yet we judge them, and complain about them.

The Stoics advise us to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, to take their perspective before passing a judgment.

We should enter their minds, says Marcus. And see what they’re like. What they’re working at. And what evokes their love and admiration. “Imagine their souls stripped bare.” We should really try to put ourselves in their perspective before we judge them.

For the Stoics, it’s more important to love than to be loved. They train themselves to deal with challenging people, particularly to avoid responding impulsively and with anger.

That’s why we should try to step into their shoes and try to understand their reason behind their action. And maybe we’ll see their reason. Maybe we’ll understand them. And maybe we’ll conclude they’re mistaken about their reason.

Remember the father with the loud kids on the train? The one we said doesn’t have the faintest idea of being a father? Good. Let me tell you a quick story about this man and his kids.

So this father is sitting on the train, his face hidden behind both hands, looking like a picture of misery. His two kids are running around and screaming loudly. People get annoyed by them. You, too, are getting annoyed and think the father should look after his kids better. You get up and approach the man:

“Excuse me, sir, your kids are very loud. Could you please tell them to be quiet?”

“Oh sorry,” he responds. “I just don’t know what to do. We’ve just come from the hospital where their mom died.”

Whoops!

What a shift in perspective, right?

We judge people but don’t know the situation they’re in. We don’t know their backstory, we don’t know why they do what they do. We basically know nothing about them.

Let’s take the Stoics’ advice by heart and always take a second before we judge others. Put yourself in their shoes, and think about possible reasons why they act the way they do. Maybe you’d do the same if you were in their situation. Who knows?