The Skin You're In

When I was in the eighth grade, I read To Kill A Mockingbird for school. Thanks to a mind fascinated with analyzing literature and an English teacher who helped make the book sing, I was enthralled. I related to the book on so many levels that even now, I think about parts of it in relation to certain situations I encounter.
 
One of the most well-known quotations from the book, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it," comes to me quite often. We tend to view situations only through the lens of our own experience. What we want in life or work is influenced by what we've had (or not had). How we go about finding what we want is also based on the skin we've walked around in before.
 
How many times do we laugh at how other people are handling a situation or see only our own view on a subject? It's not easy to view anything except from our own perspective, with our own particular experiences as a guide. It's only when we, as Atticus Finch says to his daughter, "climb into his skin" that we really understand someone else's choices.
 
Even when I was working with the same people for years, each of us came at the job from a different direction, so it is not surprising that I now see many, many approaches to working (and looking for work). We don't often even try to climb inside any skin but our own, and without doing that, we are left critical and judgmental of people's approach, a place even more dangerous in the job market than in long-term work.
 
These days, when I often barely have time to read any book, much less a classic, I am grateful for the reminders that middle school English left me. And though I'm happy with the skin I'm in, I am also aware of trying out some others, if only to understand a little better how other people are approaching things. Because there is not just one way. And if I am to survive in this freelance world, I'll have to understand them all.