There is something quite curious about the way we see other people.
When we meet someone for the first time, sometimes the first thing that appears is not the person themselves, but everything we believe defines them. The way they think, their beliefs, their country, their profession, even their financial situation.
Without realizing it, we begin to look through those layers, and little by little we stop seeing someone simply as a person.
The conversation changes, the attitude changes, even the way we listen changes. Because when we label someone, the mind begins to complete the story before the other person even has time to tell their own.
The curious thing is that many of those divisions were not there at the beginning. We learned them.
Labels and how they influence the way we see people
If you think about it, most of us were not born thinking in such complex categories. As children, many of those things hardly mattered. People were simply people. A playmate, someone to talk to, someone to laugh with.
But over the years many layers begin to appear: ideas, beliefs, opinions, sides, positions. And little by little we start looking at others through those ideas.
We do not always do it consciously. Sometimes it happens automatically. We hear a word, a position, a belief, and the mind fills in the rest. It is as if we stop listening to the person and begin listening to what we think they represent.
And in that moment, something changes. Distance appears even though nobody asked for it. Not because people are necessarily so different, but because the labels begin to weigh more than the human experience we all share.
Most people, in the end, are trying to do something quite similar: live their lives, solve problems, find some peace, or take care of the people they love.
Trying to find a little meaning in the middle of everything.
And yet, a single label, a single prejudice, is enough to forget all of that.
A journaling question to reflect on labels
Sometimes it only takes a small shift in perspective to see things differently.
That is why we ask ourselves this question, to reflect on it and write about it.
Before the ideas, the beliefs, or the money… who were we?
Writing in your journal
Today something happened that stayed on my mind afterward.
I met a friend for dinner and she arrived with someone else. She introduced us right there in the restaurant while we were waiting for our table, and we talked for a bit, the usual small talk when you meet someone new.
At one point she shared a political opinion that I did not really agree with. And I noticed something almost automatic: my mind started forming a quick idea of who that person was.
As if that single sentence were already enough to judge her as a person.
But the conversation continued for a while. We talked about normal things: work, the city, a few trips. Even so, I realized that my attitude had already changed. I noticed myself becoming more closed off with her, less open to what she was saying, as if that first comment had already shaped the way I was seeing her.
Later, when I got home, I kept thinking about it and realized that with just one sentence I had already judged her. As if that moment said more about her than I could actually know. And it made me wonder how many times we do this without even realizing it.
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