What Would You Do If You Were Wearing Different Shoes?

Put yourself in their shoes.

We've heard that said many times over the course of our lives, but how many times have we ever stopped to actually trade shoes? Probably never. Too many times we critique from the outside looking in without ever looking for the doorway to experience a situation firsthand.

So that's what this article is about - wearing someone else's shoes to get a better feel of how they live, their life, and the obstacles they face.

Here are your shoes.

The year is 2006. You live in a cinderblock house. You still cook over an open flame outdoors. You don't have a car, but you don't need one because there's no place to go in your "rancho" that would warrant one. There is no commerce. The nearest city is 100 miles and a three hour bus ride over mountainous terrain.

You're strong. You're able bodied. You have much potential, but no place to cultivate it. You work the fields that your family has worked for generations, still using the requisite mule and plow - no machinery. You grow most of what you eat and meat is a luxury that you cannot afford because there is no income to speak of. No commerce means no jobs.

Your remote location means that utilities are scarce or don't exist. You have electricity a couple of hours a day and water if you irrigate it from the creek 5 miles below the field. There is a school, but it only goes to the fifth grade. If you want to go to school beyond that, your parents must bus you into the city and pay your tuition. If you get sick, you visit curanderas (medicine women) because clinics and hospitals are not heard of in your part of the world.

There's nothing to look forward to except more of the same. You know your children will never get out of the rancho because there are no opportunities. Even if they were able to land an unschooled or unskilled job, they would make $50 a week, including endless overtime. You come to accept this way of life because it's all you've ever known.

Enter: Someone whose been to "El Norte"

It could be a cousin, a family friend, a neighbor - someone that you know makes it back from the other side and tells you of all the things in El Norte. They speak of it with a starry look in their eyes and you're seeing streets paved in gold. Freedom. Opportunity. They tell you the paltry $50 to be made in Mexican cities for an endless week could be made in less than a day in El Norte.

Your thoughts turn to your future. Your dream is not to succeed or become anything famous. You'd be content with just being able to educate your kids - feed them and clothe them and actually providing a home for them whose cracks were not sealed with dried mud. In your mind you see two things:

The Garden of Eden and The Depths of Hell

You also see your children standing in the middle of the two with pitiful looks on their faces, depending on you to get them across. The someone who has been to El Norte tells you that he's going back and how he plans to do it. He tells you he can't bear the thought of his children or his parents living the rest of their lives in squalor and existing on a diet of corn tortillas and beans.

He warns you it is a perilous journey with no guarantees and tells you of how many thousands that have lost their lives trying to get to El Norte. He tells you it's going to take days and weeks - maybe even months to trek from your remote hell to the frontera. These things weigh heavily on your mind and leave you pondering for a while.

Either way, death is certain for you. Either you stay where you are and die slowly - watching everybody that you love do the same, knowing that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Or do you risk the only thing you have to call your own - your life - and tread toward that light at the end of the tunnel before it goes out....in order to have the one chance to change the generations of sorrow and poverty that you and yours have endured in your rancho.

Here are your shoes. Which direction would you walk after you put them on?