A Day Without Shoes

Today my school took part in the Tom's shoes event "A Day Without Shoes" to raise awareness of children all over the world who are not able to wear shoes.  Usually these sort of things get looked past and are taken on only by the radical hippies but this time there were more students involved than I had assumed would be.  I drove up bright and early to my school before the majority had arrived because Service Day is tomorrow and we had another much needed early bird officer meeting so I did not get to see other students also participating.  For a few moments I experienced the sudden panic of "Wait, is it today?" because there is always that possibility of you being the only person taking part in something that is actually not due until next week.  This thought process went on until I looked down on the pavement and spotted a bare foot print of water and all my fears were released.  Here it goes... a day without shoes.  The concept seems so easy when you first consider it -"one day" that is all- how hard can it be? We love not wearing shoes around the pool or at the beach and some possibly even take their shoes off as soon as they enter the house but have you ever thought about your feet hitting the raw concrete - step after step?  Have you ever walked up and incline or felt the jagged rocks under your soles for longer than a few seconds until you could jump into a safe piece of grass? This simple "no shoe wearing" is not for us to see how good we have it but to realize how bad other people situations may be. I used to always go on trips or service projects and come home talking about how blessed I was to not be in that situation until I heard a great man by the name of Soup Campbell tell me that those experiences aren't to enhance our awareness of the good in our lives, but to increase the reality of the need around us.  People don't want to hear about how sorry you feel or how thankful you are for being in a better place because frankly, you are no better off in a mansion than you are in a shack if your heart is frozen to the real troubles going on all around you.  I will say that I do appreciate shoes more (especially on the strip of gravel leading to Eagle Hall from my car) but I will not simply leave it at that.  I am more aware of how much shoes are actually needed and how little we think about their addition to our health.  We atleast walk on somewhat clean sidewalks and can trot over to the grass or inside a building to escape the "oh so terrible concrete" but what about those kids in Africa who have never seen a paved road? I heard a kid say today that we might have it worse because atleast "those kids" get to walk on sand/dirt.  I almost laughed in their face not because it was funny but because it shocked me how innocent the student was in their thinking and reasoning behind the comment.  What alot of us do not realize is that we only went a day and these kids go weeks/months/years and maybe lifetimes without covering on their feet- imagine the sores and calluses that soon build up.  Our feet control more than we think they do, for example I saw many girls wrapping their jackets around their feet because they were cold. It was a rather warm day and yet our feet were cold therefore our whole bodies became a little colder.  This morning I was twitching my leg as I always do no matter what and kicked the sharp pole under the computer desk- for one, I screamed out loud and for two I had never experienced pain from twitching my leg like that before because I had never had my feet exposed in such a place.  These kids do not get to choose when they can wear shoes or not and we should not just consider ourselves "blessed" but actually take part in what this day was about and try to help.  Shoes- such a simple item to most of us and yet so many all around have never owned their own pair.

www.onedaywithoutshoes.com