Preconceived Notions.

Every other day we meet some new person in life. Most often we meet such a person through a common friend slash acquaintance. And whenever you get introduced, such a person will always give you some constructive/destructive input about the person and his peculiarities. This is inescapable, and also the root cause of a number of problems with a lot of people. Because, when we meet this new person, what our friend is doing is implanting HIS image of that person into your mind, which leaves little room for you to make your own impression of the person.

The problem with this lies in human nature itself. We humans are essentially animals, and as such we have certain instincts. These instincts include at a primal level the ability and basic attribute of creating the image of a person to go along with the physical existence of each person. All animals remember an individual by the image it hold of him. Example: if you throw a stone at a dog for each day for the next 3 days, he will instinctively run on seeing you, because now there's an image in his mind that he should expect a stone on his head when he sees you. The human brain doesn't work much differently. Except maybe for the fact that it creates an image on a number of other complicated inputs.

By this I mean, we humans tend to create an image of a person based solely on what we hear about him/her. Most people will create such a concrete image that they refuse to let go of it inspite of all attempts to break it down. This attribute of humans to create an image based on external input other than actual experience is a very frustrating thing. An even greater frustration is the irritating habit of the human brain to stick to this preconceived notion of a person. We find it frustratingly hard to break the preconceived image created in another person's mind, and any person who has a preconceived image of another person will see all activites, habits, movements, talking etc in that color.

Many a times we even make a mental image of a person on the first time we see him/her. Though this image can be broken easily its still the human quirk of judging people the instant we see them. Nothing thrills me more than breaking this preconceived notion that people make as soon as they lay their eyes on me. Its the most amazing thing to break the image people make of you, and to have them create their own perspective of what you want them to know. Though each external element will always contribute towards or against this effort, I always believe in giving each person a chance to impress their image on my mind, and then its upto me to hold it up or break it down and make my own.

Essentially, we depend so much on other people's opinions of a person that we refuse to give that person a second chance at creating his actual image for you. Somehow we started giving more weightage to other people's opinions than creating our own. Which is why I find it absolutely interesting to meet a completely random person. It gives me a chance to create an untainted and unaffected opinion of the person based on my own experiences. Its a refreshing experience as I have recently found out. I urge everyone to try it.



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