Incognito

Some people tend to normally write off whole swathes of humanity by sticking a label on them and dismissing them.

I went to a grocery shop today where a salesgirl recognized me and came up to talk but I sneezed while I stood too near to a huge shelf and immediately she said “You always have cold, don’t you?” I calmly pointed out to her that the shelf above me probably had dust and I was sensitive to dust. But she was not pacified with my answer and retorted back “but when I saw you the other day at the hospital with your mother, you were sneezing there too”. I smiled at her and told her that poor ventilated rooms have that effect on me sometimes. But even than, she still had a look of disbelief on her face. I shrugged and walked down the aisle putting grocery into my shopping cart. The shop girl and I had two chance meetings in a space of one year inbetween and she had already labeled me on health rates pertaining to two sneezes!

Huge numbers of people are judged daily, given a label and dismissed. Or simply put into neat little boxes called generalization. Did we come across people who voiced their opinions similar to this sentence?

“Want more”? No, I didn’t think you would.

Is there any remedy for this classification or should we just drift away, not paying heed because we just don’t have the time. I know for certain that if that girl at the store was someone who had meant a lot to me, I would have liked to make her understand my situation, but since I didn’t know her, I didn’t expedite a lot of time on her.

As we grow, we learn that these labels mean something that we may not want to be associated with. Furthermore, we learn that we are labeling ourselves to others with our posture, body language, and tone of voice as well as mental and physical well being.