The video often shared as the story of a homeless boy who sits next to a rich boy on a bench is a short film called My Shoes, made in 2012 by director Nima Raoofi as a MAPS Film School production in Adelaide, Australia. It runs for about four minutes and has no dialogue to speak of. A boy in torn shoes envies another child's new pair, gets his wish to trade places, and then learns the one thing he could not see from the outside: the other boy cannot walk.
That twist is the whole point. The film asks a simple question that most of us answer badly in daily life: when we look at someone and want what they have, how much of their life are we actually looking at?
What happens in My Shoes
The setting is a park. A poor boy sits with his worn-out shoes, the soles coming apart, and notices a well-dressed boy nearby wearing a smart new pair. The camera stays on the poor boy's face as admiration slides into resentment. Why does that child get everything, and why does he get nothing?
In the logic of a fable, the wish is granted. The two boys swap places. The boy who wanted the shoes now has them, and he quickly discovers what came with them: a body that could not carry him. The child he envied could not run, climb or kick a ball, the things the first boy did without thinking. The ending lands quietly, with the new owner of the shoes realising that his old life held something worth far more than leather and laces.
The YouTube description calls it a fable about life's appearances, which is an honest label. It is not a documentary about poverty or disability. It is a moral tale, compact enough to watch on a phone and pointed enough to stay with you.
Why envy is so easy and so misleading
Comparing ourselves with others is one of the oldest habits of the mind. In 1954 the psychologist Leon Festinger proposed what became known as social comparison theory: people have a basic drive to judge their own opinions and abilities, and when there is no objective yardstick, they measure themselves against other people.
Researchers later split comparisons into two directions. Looking down at someone worse off tends to make us feel better about our own position. Looking up at someone who seems better off can inspire effort, but it is also linked to feeling inferior, anxious or sorry for ourselves, especially after a recent setback. The boy on the bench is caught in a classic upward comparison, and he is having a bad day.
Envy itself has a long pedigree as a subject. Aristotle described it in his Rhetoric as “the pain caused by the good fortune of others.” Modern psychologists distinguish a malicious kind, which wants the other person brought down, from a benign kind, which still stings but pushes a person to improve. Envy is also different from jealousy: jealousy is mostly about the fear of losing a relationship, while envy is about wanting what someone else has.
The trouble with envy is not only that it feels bad. It is that it runs on incomplete information. We see the shoes and not the legs, the holiday photos and not the debt, the promotion and not the sleepless nights. The film exaggerates this blind spot to make it visible.
The social media version of the park bench
Most adults no longer meet the boy in new shoes in a park. They meet him in a feed. A friend posts sunset photos from a Greek island, a colleague shares a new car, a cousin announces a perfect engagement, and the reaction can be the same mix of congratulations on the screen and quiet frustration inside.
Studies summarised in the research on social comparison point to curated online content as a powerful trigger for upward comparison. Feeds are highlight reels by design, and researchers have linked them to stress, dissatisfaction and the fear of missing out. One 2021 study of university students found they felt worse about themselves after looking at image-focused Instagram posts. Other work suggests the harm is not automatic but runs through comparison and self-esteem: the platform matters less than the way we use it to measure ourselves.
Seen that way, My Shoes is less about two children and more about a reflex we all carry around in our pockets.
A fair criticism of the twist
Stories like this have a known weakness. The ending works by turning the disabled boy into a lesson for the able-bodied one. His life becomes the cautionary half of a comparison, and the audience is invited to feel lucky not to be him.
Disability advocates have long questioned that kind of storytelling, because it treats disability as the worst possible outcome rather than as one of many ways people live, and because it rarely gives the disabled character a point of view of his own. A disabled child is not a tragedy in a nice coat, and a child in torn shoes is not simply a symbol of want. Poverty is real hardship with real causes, and gratitude does not fix it.
It is possible to take the film's message seriously while noticing its limits. The useful lesson is not that someone always has it worse. It is that a glance tells us very little about anyone's life, in either direction.
What to take from it
A four-minute fable cannot change a habit by itself, but it can give you a moment of pause the next time envy flares. A few practical ideas grow naturally out of the film:
- Notice the missing information. When you catch yourself envying someone, ask what you cannot see. The answer is usually: almost everything.
- Turn envy into direction. Benign envy can be useful. If a friend's trip makes you restless, it may be telling you that you want more travel, and that is something you can plan for.
- Take stock of what you already rely on. Health, mobility, friends and time are easy to overlook precisely because they are always there.
- Limit the comparison triggers. If certain accounts or apps reliably leave you feeling worse, it is reasonable to mute them or use them less.
- Do not use other people's struggles as a mood booster. Feeling grateful is healthy; treating someone's disability or hardship as proof that you are fine is not.
The quiet power of My Shoes is that it lets the viewer reach the conclusion alone. The boy did not need different shoes. He needed a fuller picture, and so, most days, do we.
About the film and its makers
My Shoes was directed by Nima Raoofi and produced at MAPS Film School in Adelaide, South Australia. The film school uploaded it to YouTube in January 2013, and from there it spread widely through viral pages under dramatic headlines that described the poor boy as homeless. The film itself is better described as what its makers called it: a short fable about appearances. In 2015 it was shared through Idealist Revolution and Hefty, which is how it first reached many readers of this site.
Sources: My Shoes (2012), dir. Nima Raoofi, MAPS Film School, YouTube; AulaPT, summary of My Shoes; Wikipedia: Social comparison theory; Wikipedia: Envy; Idealist Revolution via Hefty.
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