I Walked Barefoot

I didn’t care. No one did.

I walked barefoot yesterday.

The cobbler saw me, looked down at my feet, stared up at me, looked me in the eye and said someone must’ve called me a mad person on my way to his shop. I don’t know why he said that cause no one in their right mind would call me mad. Fine girl like me 😏. When I am not dressed in rags. Anyway, the man sha insulted me. He had this weird sense of humor. He even said we had to pay extra for bringing such badly made shoes. When my friend told him she made them( she didn’t by the way), he called her a village girl.

In case it isn’t already obvious, my shoes got damaged—the left one. I had to walk a considerable distance to get to repair it because my friend (let’s call her Joy) said she couldn’t take my shoes to the cobbler and bring them back because I didn’t deserve it. In her defense, I knew it was going to happen because I told her earlier in the day that I felt one of my shoes would cut but I still wore them anyway. If you ask me, I don’t know why I still wore them.

In this life, don’t have friends like Joy. Joy will leave you in the desert with no water and run away.

In this life, have money so that you can buy good shoes that will not embarrass you, shoes that will not be shouting “skrrrr skrrr” against the ground as you walk.

God abeg 😄

Anyway, I couldn’t walk with just one shoe cause I remembered a Hadith that says it’s not good to walk with one shoe, it’s either you walk with both or remove them both. So I did what I did. I walked barefoot.

My feet on the ground—on the earth, on wet sand, on concrete, were cold, yet soothing. It felt really nice and it didn’t feel like anyone paid attention. If anyone did, I truly didn’t notice or maybe I just did not care. And it didn’t matter.

I didn’t hit my feet against a rock or stumble because I felt eyes were boring holes into my skin. I didn’t frantically look around to see who noticed I wasn’t wearing shoes. I didn’t walk too fast or too slow. The world didn’t stop. Everyone moved about because the world does not revolve around me.

Sometimes, it takes the littlest things to know that you’ve outgrown certain behavior, and are now more daring. You react differently in a way that suggests that you are loosened up yet, more controlled. And you wonder why you ever felt shame towards something that no one actually cared about.

We feel the whole world is watching our every move when it’s really just in our heads. This very feeling limits the extent to which we take action that could turn our lives around only if we tried. We are afraid of being judged, of being criticized. To be honest, no one cares about your life any more than you care about theirs.

If anything, the world is waiting for what you have to offer, you just have to feel a little confident and believe.

I am going to leave you with this quote by Paul Coelho in The Alchemist—I can read the book a hundred times. It’s one of my favorites.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Hadith: The narration of the sayings, doings or approvals of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) with accounts of his daily practice (the Sunna), which constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims apart from the Qur’an.