Many of us remember the iconic scene in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with Atticus and Scout in the porch swing. Scout has had a rough first day of school, a bumpy start with getting along with her teacher.

Encouraging Scout to understand the first day was also likely stressful for her new teacher, Atticus-Gregory Peck in his distinguished Southern voice intones, ‘Scout, you really can’t understand someone else until you climb into their skin and walk around in their skin for a while.’

‘Getting in another person’s skin…shoes…moccasins’: we’ve heard versions of this many times. While we are pretty good at talking about empathy – seeing it/feeling it from another person’s perspective – we aren’t so hot at actually doing it.

So, as if this does not challenge us enough with people, lately, I have become more aware of the importance of getting into our pets’ skin.

In a recent New York Times Book Review (10/16/2022), there is an interview with noted ‘animal behaviorist and autism advocate’ Temple Grandin. Among her comments, she says…

“A dog lives in a smell-based world that humans have a difficult time comprehending. When people walk their dogs, they often yank them away from the trees or bushes they are smelling. People do not realize that they are depriving their dog of a rich experience of myriad smells.”

A few years back my daily run transitioned into a daily jog, and more recently now to what I call a daily jaunt…a vigorous walk.

Plus, part of that has become an OCD-ish gotta’ get my steps in thing. That’s a 12 or 16 thousand daily step deal (5 – 7 miles) spliced over morning, afternoon, and evening segments.

So, here’s the Bill the humanoid biped and Sam the canine quadruped deal. Bill wants to jaunt. Sam wants leisurely to sniff…trees, leaves, grass, sticks, acorns, pinecones, rocks, bugs, and residue from various neighborhood critters.

Dogs are estimated to have 100 million smell receptors compared to humans’ 6 million (16X more). Google University says dogs proportionately use something like 40% more of their brains for their olfactory work than we human types. To a degree, my dog lives to smell not just the roses but most everything!

So…in recent weeks, when jaunting, Dianne (who does the afternoon leg with us) and I are trying to yank less, to intersperse more Sam saunter/sniff time with our cardio-vascular ‘get-er-done’ pace.

Progress not perfection. Sigh. Sam still gets yanks, but less than before, as we try to walk around a bit more in his skin. On occasion Sam stands his ground – which has a yank back effect – reenforcing that he has a mind and skin of his own.

Across the years, Temple Grandin has studied how animals – horses, dogs, cattle, etc. – process their world. We humans surely ‘see’ things, yet we tend to make sense of things verbally with concepts/ideas, while animals, best we can tell, do so visually with pictures.

Grandin is famous for prompting changes in the meat processing industry. Her capacity for “seeing things” the way cows, pigs, chickens do has led to more humane, less frightful-painful procedures for those creatures who give their lives for us.

In her new book - VISUAL THINKING: THE HIDDEN GIFTS OF PEOPLE WHO THINK IN PICTURES, PATTERNS, AND ABSTRACTIONS – Temple focuses on variations in the ways we humans process our world. Much of this is enriched by her experience as an autistic person who tends to excel in visualizing but is challenged in conceptualizing.

It turns out that we range between extreme visualizers and extreme verbalizers – most somewhere in between. Some process experience more visually: may not be too good at abstract algebra but cool with seeable object geometry. Verbalizers tend to do better on standardized tests, abstract reasoning. Visualizers are often good at art, inventions, taking things apart and putting them together.

Well, loads more to it. I am far enough into the book to “see” it’s worth the read for Grandin’s case that our educational system is in critical need to make room for getting into the skins of students who often learn differently: hands on learners vs. head trip learners.

All this prompts me to consider how Atticus and Temple help us enskinned humans live more kindly together on a prickly, polarized planet. What’s more the God we see and experience in Jesus gives us the amazing grace/gift of being able to consider what it is like to do life in another suit of skin.

I confess that most of us aging, straight, white-privilege guys need a bit of remedial coaching/coaxing to imagine what it is like to live in the skin of a black person, female person, gay person, frightened immigrant person, or fill in your blank ________, without getting defensive or offensive.

I am thankful for those who yank my life leash on occasion to see/feel a bit what living and dying in another version of skin is like. For sure, I am thankful for those that give me a little slack for my remedial work.

Also, thanks to Sam who yanks back.