Happy New Year 2021

 

Happy New Year!

I will start the new year of 2021 with a new pair RockRooster work boots! They will arrive in the first week of January.  I have tried a few expensive brand boots and many pairs of cheap boots.  The boots that work best for me are wide boots, with a zipper and laces.  Steel toes are nice but not essential.  Big 5 has had tan Quick Response boots in men’s size 9.5 for several years.  I go through a pair in a little over 6 months with daily wear outdoors in all weather. I need high tops for ankle support, zippers to get them on and off quickly so that I can run to the bathroom without tracking mud through the house, and laces so that I can create the custom fit to support my ankles and not squeeze the bone spur protruding up from my left foot.  I need the width for my bunions and room to install my bunion support insoles. 

Even though it is possible that my bunions are a genetic issue, they don’t seem to be handed to me by my parents.  It is more likely that too small of a toe box in most women’s shoes, cheap flip flops, and not much money are the root cause of my discomfort.  Wide shoes are standard for men but not women.  I have found very few men’s off the rack shoes to be cute, but I have found them to be much more comfortable than women’s shoes.  What is my point you wonder?

Foundations are important. Our feet are our most basic foundation.  I’ve spent a life time wearing cheap and available shoes.  My feet are a mess.  Could I have put more money into my feet? No, not ethically.  For me to have had a bigger choice, I would have had to been in charge of bringing in the bacon, found a richer husband, or had naked children.  My foundations were weak on most fronts, so none of that was likely.

The human condition is a phrase used to embrace all of humanity.  “Women’s shoes,” is a phrase used to embrace all shoes made for women.  Just as we standardize shoes, we standardize humans.  When someone else chose my shoes, it was determined that they fit by how much room existed beyond my toes.  When I said they were too tight, I was always told they would stretch.  I used this same reasoning on myself for years.  Even as more money became available for me to have proper fitting shoes, I still practiced the same foundational thinking that I learned as a young person.  It doesn’t matter how much the boots cost if the same criteria is used in the fitting of them.

Why don’t I just buy the usual Quick Response boots from Big 5 in men’s 9.5?  Because they are out of stock, again, both in the store and on-line.  I was given an Amazon gift card for Christmas that opened my mind toward buying boots on-line.  This is a scary proposition for me.  I don’t like the hassle of returning merchandise.  I don’t like wasting money on me.  That might be another element for deeper exploration, but for now this article is about foundations. 

The really big thing about me getting these boots is that I still have two pair of yucky, grubby, Quick-Response boots, and I am already looking for new boots.  Yippee on me.  I didn’t have to have big holes in my boots for me to begin the upgrade.  I still had to have an event of some kind happen for me to choose a different brand and a different place to shop.

Foundations is a plural word.  It suggests we have more than one.  It is easy to see the concrete for a foundation of a house, but there is also the foundational plumbing, electrical, and water.  If they don’t line up with each other, there will be a failure somewhere.   The human existence is like that.  If our foundations weren’t solid then our weaknesses are exposed with each unexpected experience.  It is easier to tell someone, even yourself, to suck it up, than it is to locate the problem.  Why would that be?

In my case, the adults responsible for me were unaware of their impact on my health and prosperity.  We were just coming out of the, “Children should be seen and not heard,” generation and our comfort was still dominated by roofs over our heads, shoes on our feet, and food on the table.  The quality of those things were directly related to the income of the household.  Poverty had one way of thinking and wealth had another way of thinking or so we were taught.  My father believed in the pay off of hard work.  Today his prosperity thinking shows in the quality of life he has in a senior community.  He actively reaches for and appreciates joy in his life.  In my childhood, he kept his nose to the grindstone and even though he may have brought in enough money for me to have proper fitting shoes, his wife would not have been able to condone the expense, because I would outgrow the shoes in a year anyway.  As a single parent, my father did put corrective shoes on my feet.  Those corrective shoes were to offset pigeon toes but they still weren’t always wide enough for me.

During 2020 I have been able to dig even deeper into my own internal foundational workings than ever because as I sort and toss and create and rearrange, I am not trying to create a space for someone else not to criticize if they happen to see it.  I laugh at myself for feeling embarrassed about the lack of tidiness around me.  For 2021, I pray that I continue on the path and this method of re-establishing my foundations by ripping off the figurative dry wall, and yanking out the mouse chomped figurative insulation, and reworking the figurative breaker box that limits the amount energy that I can harness.  I want to never stack, cover up, or hide stuff that doesn’t serve me, again.  For 2021 I want to keep dragging it out in the open, sweeping away the cobwebs both figurative and literal, to bring the real me out into the open where I can reshape my life in a way that not only serves me better, but opens the door for prosperity to walk in, and make itself comfortable! 

As with my shoes, I will allow myself to take up a lot more space in 2021!   I will not be defined by my circumstances! Happy New Year!

Sincerely, Carmen Davis