In your kitchen you have a system for deciding where you put stuff. You categorise the pots and the cups and the cutlery. People have different systems, some people categorise things by their purpose, a cupboard for baking things, and a draw for serving utensils. Other people categorise things by what they’re are made of, a cupboard for metel things, another for things made of ceramics, another for odd plastic boxes. Others sort by size, or by shape. As humans, our brains are good at categorising things, labeling them by some system that devides problems into simpler and more manageable pieces.
We do this with people too. We love Myers-Briggs, and other systems that break up personaliltys into a descreet number of groups. We love to find words that define people, that abstract them into types, for easy management. We assign labels to people based on how they act, what they do, what they’ve done, what size they are, what shape.
We have thousands of labels: Good, Bad, Optimist, Pessimist, Smart, Fat, Thin, Christian, Non-Christian, Murderer, Criminal, Dumb, Shallow, Sinner, Cynical, Gay, Straight, Nice, Beautiful, Wise, Foolish, Boring, Interesting…
Have you ever gone walking at night without a light? At first all is dark, and then as your eyes adjust, you can see light and shadow, what was once all darkness becomes shades of grey. So much in life is not black and white, especially people.
I believe if we are to love people as God loves them, we must never write someone off as being one thing or another. We must believe even the most awful of criminals are capable of the most graceful acts, even the most wise and good people are capable of the most foolish actions. People are ever changing, ever growing, ever breaking. People are people, and nothing more or less.
I love this: http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/756/
The light and darkness in others, reflects the light and darkness within ourselves. There are no categories of people in the real world, people come in every different hue and shade, and all are capable of change. The boxes we place them in, are in our own minds only.
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Oh Andy you are so neat. This is the kind of stuff I wish I could write on my blog, but I suck too much at putting my thoughts into interesting pieces of literature.
I think about myself a lot. How, if someone criticizes me I think, “I made that person angry or upset – I’m a horrible person”. But later after I’ve gotten over it, I think about how I’m not a “horrible person” for accidentally making someone upset, and I’m not even a “horrible person” for the times when I purposely make someone upset. I know myself so I know that there are many different sides to who I am. Sometimes I can be mean, sometimes I can be ignorant, sometimes stupid, sometimes funny, sometimes kind, sometimes a liar, sometimes happy, sometimes loving, sometimes grumpy, sometimes welcoming, sometimes hateful, and so on…. there are many more.
I often catch myself judging another person in this same way – they do something which doesn’t fit into the “lens” I view the world through, and I think, “man that person’s a dick for doing that”, and I ignore all the good qualities about that person because this one thing has taken them over in my mind. Eventually I realise, “well, okay, but I’m a dick quite a lot too”, and I have to remind myself that just like me, a person who offends me actually has a lot more to them than that one (or maybe more) offensive act(s). A person isn’t just one thing – people are way too complex. Even the most hardened murderers have been someone’s beloved son or daughter, or friend, or father/mother, or uncle/aunt.
Cool post, dude.
Thanks Chelz. But you don’t suck at writing. You should try. I just tell myself it doesn’t matter what I write because nobody will read it.
I’m reading it – so watch out