Do you think a part of being a barefooter are to promote a barefoot choise for other people. To tell other about your experience, tell your opinion? Do you think barefooters have to support other people to go barefoot? Or do you live your life and don´t care about others?
I believe if a curious obsever notices that you are barefoot and makes a comment that is not nasty and/or they just seem curious I just try to explain why I do it and the benefits and pleasures of doing so, and if the person is open minded enough to listen (I figure if they just give you a dirty look or make a nasty comment they probably are not very open minded so I don't waste my time and I could care less what they think.) I usually find that is a pleasurable experiance, and while I may not have converted them into barefooters I at least have tried to open up a new perspective to them. Last summer I was hiking at a state park and I stopped to take a picture of a squirrel while I was doing so a lady caught up to me, she had seen the bare footprints on the trail in spots and was suprised she caught up to me, She wasn't negative at all, she told me a guy in indy runs barefoot all the time and she agreed to all of the benifits I told her about, I told her how to get started by going barefoot in the yard and stuff like that but I don't think she was converted into a barefooter. She told me to keep at it. I felt awesome after that conversation with a complete stranger, and it made me realize not everyone thinks we are strange, and some of the shoddies actually envy us. So in short I feel that if someone is actually interested in our barefooting we should try to explain it to them, and if they start barefooting, great! If not they may be more tolerant to it as a result of our conversations. I still feel the people that are just totally ignorant about it and make it known how close minded they are, well I don't worry about them.
