Over the years I have heard many people say “Walk 1,000 miles in my shoes before you make a judgment.” Growing up I understood what the concept meant but I had never had the opportunity to actually execute the expression. It was not until this past summer that I finally had an experience and understanding of what it meant to walk 1,000 miles in someone’s shoes.
For the past 25 years, my father has worked for an electric and gas company in the state of New Jersey. My father would work rigorous hours because the job was so demanding, there would be times where he would work over 100 hours a week. When I was younger I would wait for him to come home and ask him to have a catch but he would tell me he is too tired. As a child and teenager I could never really grasp why he was so tired.
This past summer, the same company hired me as a “Safety Watcher” for an electrical substation. The job consisted of me monitoring Union workers as they made repairs to the electrical transformers and lines throughout the substation. I would have to walk around one of the biggest substations in New Jersey making sure these men were not in danger of the thousands of volts that were only feet away from them.
Although the job does not seem like much, I was working in 90-degree weather and with the heat reflecting off of the stone would make the heat index reach 100 degrees by nine in the morning.
Another terrible part of the job was that I was by myself and did not have any co-workers to converse with. As surprising as this sounds it gets extremely lonely if you are by yourself for a long period of time. Sometimes I felt that I was going crazy because I would find myself talking to myself about random things. Looking back, I feel that the combination of extreme heat and isolation made me a bit crazy. Even with the extreme heat and isolation that was not the worst part of the job.
Just like my father, I was working eighty-four hours a week, or twelve hours a day, seven days a week. My daily routine from May until mid August goes as follows: I would wake up at 5 A.M. every day, start work at 6:30 A.M., leave work at 6:30 P.M., go to the gym at 7:30 P.M., at 9 P.M. I would finally arrive home, eat dinner and immediately go to bed and then repeat.
As it would be for most people, this schedule took a massive toll on me, I would rarely have the energy and time to go out and spend time with my friends. My eyes were sunk into my skull and I was physically beat into the ground. I just knew I didn’t have any other choice but to wake up at for the 5 A.M. alarm and go to work and repeat the same exact thing.
Although I did learn some valuable information about electricity and transformers while I worked at the substation, it does not compare to the invaluable lesson that I learned. I learned to appreciate the physical, mental, and time sacrifices that my father has made to further benefit myself. With that being said I believe in walking a 1,000 miles in someone’s shoes.