A Meditation on Shoes

Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes.

So many shoes to choose.

Choose, choose, choose.

I wonder if other women shop for shoes the way my sister and I do.

We sat on the couch on Thanksgiving and looked at them online before Black Friday and verbally deconstructed them piece by piece.

This is what happens when you are way too analytical and your mother taught you way too much art theory.

Ugh, I hate the block heel trend, it reminds me of Clydesdales.

Ok, those horses might be beautiful and graceful in the knees and legs, but they look so clunky in the feet.

This pair is black, so it would go with all my outfits…

This pair is brown, that’s branching out, it won’t go with as many things and will be difficult to match…

UGH, how I hate the shoes that are difficult to match! What a waste of time to try and find just the right pair of shoes in the morning!

The real winner-winner-chicken-dinner is finding the shoe with the right level of practicality and the right color and the right niceness to fit your everyday needs and for the right price. The perfect shoe, really. Which is impossible to find. There’s no such thing as perfection in this life.

Or maybe you live a minimalist life, and keep only a few pairs of shoes for the various areas of life you typically rotate through. I strive for this. One pair in, one pair out — if you buy, you must throw a pair out, so the saying goes.

But what is just the right number of shoes?

I don’t know, I often wonder this. I like to adventure into so many places in life. Hiking, and walks in the rain, and church, and over to people’s houses, and shopping, and…

I have a love-hate relationship with heels. I mean, have you seen how they damage your body?

I wonder sometimes if this is why nuns live so long and happily. They keep about three pairs of shoes, all of which are practical. And they don’t wear heels.

I think I’ve got to stop wearing heels until I stop being insecure about being five-two. For goodness sakes, this is the body God gave me! When am I ever going to stop worrying about that?