Several events this week made me think about perspectives. The events: two books, a play, and bumper stickers.
The books. The main characters in the books The Maid (1) and Someone Else’s Shoes (2) were both hotel maids, but they had different perspectives on their jobs. One loved her job, one hated it.
In The Maid, Molly is a maid at an upscale New York hotel. She loves her job. She says, “Never in my life did I think I’d hold such a lofty position in a grand hotel. I know others think differently, that a maid is a lowly nobody. I know we’re all supposed to aspire to become doctors and lawyers and rich real-estate tycoons. But not me. I’m so thankful for my job that I pinch myself every day. I really do. Especially now, without Gran. Without her, home isn’t home. It’s as though all the color has been drained from the apartment we shared. But the moment I enter the Regency Grand, the world turns Technicolor bright.”
Molly used to rely on her grandmother, who recently passed, to interpret people’s facial expressions and words. Many in our book club thought Molly might be on the autism spectrum.
Conversely, in Someone Else’s Shoes, Nisha Cantor had lived a globetrotting life of the wealthy until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off from everything: her access to their hotel room and clothes, their various lawyers, and the money and credit cards. She is left on her own in London, away from her home in New York. Nisha is left with nothing but her day bag and her street clothes including Christian Louboutin shoes and an exquisite jacket. But another gym patron accidentally takes Nisha’s bag, which looks like her own. When Nisha tries to sneak into the hotel to avoid the doorman, who has been told to not let her enter, a maid mistakes her for a housekeeping applicant. Nisha realizes posing as a maid is a way of dodging the security her husband has set up and trying to enter their once-shared hotel room.
Nisha hates being a maid. She “gags again as she lifts the toilet seat and wipes it, then pauses and wipes her face. Her eyes are streaming. She has never hated humanity as much as she does in that moment.” It reminds her of her humble beginnings as a maid. She has worked her way up to a prestigious art dealer when she met the wealthy patron she married.
Those books showed how circumstances, expectations, and your focus can mold your attitude toward a situation. Molly, from humble beginnings, prized her job. She worked in a beautiful hotel, she liked the order of her job and tools. Even though she was ostracized by her coworkers, she focused on the things that made her happy.
Nisha, also from humble beginnings, had worked her way to a high social status and had high expectations. Having experienced the good life, she hated everything about the humble circumstances into which she had been thrown. She focused on getting her clothing back, including the Christian Louboutin shoes that had been in her gym bag and which her husband was demanding she return before he would negotiate a settlement with her.
Someone Else’s Shoes, a fun, humorous book is all about perspectives. The accidental switch of gym bags impacts both owner’s lives. Nisha has to wear the clothes and ‘ugly flats’ in the gym bag she picks up and notes how these simple clothes make her invisible. Sam, who picks up Nisha’s bag by mistake, sells printing services. She’s having a midlife crisis and feels worthless. She’s wearing the flip-flops from the gym, but looks in the bag and finds Christian Louboutin heels and an expensive jacket. She dons them for her next sales call and her colleagues note how the client stares at her pricy shoes. Her attitude perks up in those clothes. Once she gets used to those heels, her sales demeanor changes and she negotiates several massive deals. She asks her colleague, “Am I letting down the sisterhood?...you know—using sex as a weapon. They are basically sex, these shoes, right?”
Wearing someone else’s shoes can change your perspective and the perspective of people who observe you.
The play: The play The Refugees has a twist on the refugee situation. After a US civil war, an American family ends up as refugees in a Middle Eastern country. The husband, once a lawyer in the US, works as a grocery store clerk. The teenage son, who sleeps on a couch in the alcove of the living room, is bullied by local boys. The son befriends other US refugees but since they are always in a group, the police see them as a gang. A social worker visits to tell the family their paperwork isn’t correct and they may face relocation to a tent city situated outside of town if they don’t correct it. She offers her help. The husband, angry and feeling displaced and entitled because of his previous status rejects the social worker. The wife, however, accepts the social worker’s help and they become friends. In trying to get out of their situation, the husband has several bad incidents and ends up admitting his frailty and need to accept help and friendship from someone totally different from himself.
The Bumper Stickers. With my brain keyed into noticing perspectives, one day I noticed bumper stickers on the car in front of me at a stop light: A cross, a peace symbol, and “there is no planet B” on a BMW hybrid. I assume, “What a thoughtful person.” Wrong. When the light turns green, the car dashes in front of the car in the next lane and weaves in and out of lanes cutting off several cars. I switched perspectives of that driver in an instant.
Finally, I was having dinner with a friend and we talked about how people criticize the food at our Senior Living restaurants. She chuckled, "We never criticized the food in college." How true. We were focused on the college experience and barely noticed the food the cafeterias served. Now, dinner is a main event for many of our residents. Different situations, different expectations, different perspectives. Friends 'from the outside' who visit our restaurants are quite happy with the food.
So it’s been a week of noticing perspectives: how your current situation molds your perception of what happens around you and how your perception can change – sometimes in an instant.
Has your perspective of something changed because of something that happened or something as trivial as a bumper sticker?
One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. —Henry Miller
References
Prose, Nita. The Maid: A Novel (Molly the Maid Book 1) (p. 7). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
JoJo Moyes, Someone Else’s Shoes, Pamela Dorman Books, February 7, 2023.
Note: I loved both of these books. Someone Else’s Shoes was a page-turner for me and full of humor.
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