Brain Boxes.
- Aarushi....
- Oct 5, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 10, 2020
Doesn't it bother you how sometimes people box you up in a certain bubble of adjectives and simply label you likeable or not? How you can either be sweet or bitchy, ideal or a brat, nice or mean?
We create our own personalities, right? Wrong. Personalities are composed of the influence of perspective. What our parents, friends tell us about ourselves is who we are. If they say that we're sweet and kind then that's how we behave with everyone around us. We are led to believe that we are indeed, sweet and kind. On the other hand, if we're told that we're useless, that we are good for nothing we believe that we are, in fact, good for absolutely nothing. We are what we present ourselves as. We are exactly what others say we are.
We cause our personalities. You are who you've become after years of experiences, relationships and growth. You are composed of every version of yourself over the years. Whether it was running wild on the open ground or anxiously making notes as the teacher drones on in class, and making origami planes only to land them in the dustbin, we are all of those people. Human beings have a lot of faces. Each face is that of a person inside of them, a different facet of their personality. Sometimes, these traits coexist in harmony, while other times, they exist on completely different ends of the spectrum.
I have a very weird personality, and that's why, most of the time, I stay quiet. Either I'm planning to fabulously murder the whole of my class or I am overcome by the love I have for my friends and can't stop singing random Disney songs. I am absolutely certain that if my mind could be read, I could not be included in sane society.
Human beings love to classify things. To put everything around them in neatly labelled boxes, with no scope for change, or improvement. We love to create generalised formulae or stereotypes and apply them in all situations, allowing for very few exceptions. We judge people based on our own perception of their character, which may have little or no semblance to their true self. We perceive the people around us in exactly two dimensions. Why do I say this? Surely our thoughts and memories although abstract are in three dimensions? Here, I am not referring to the Cartesian idea of dimensions.
Close your eyes. Well, close your eyes after you read this. Think of any person in your life, pick any person. Now picture them clearly. Who is he/she, what kind of a person is he/she?
We perceive this person with respect to our own analysis of this person and just one other perspective. It could be good or bad, but we take into account only one other perspective.
Our need to put people in tiny boxes and to 'caption' and like each box often clouds our judgement of a person. We are unable to break the box. This is where the phrase " out of the box" comes from. We form boxes all around us, not just with people. If there's a certain subject we do not enjoy, say, for example, Geography. I have never enjoyed Geography because at a certain point in my life I disliked the subject, and I put it in a box, and no matter how well I did in the subject, later on, I did not enjoy it. On the other hand, I loved English Literature, and I still continue to enjoy studying and exploring it.
So, essentially what I am trying to say is, that our brains are in many ways similar to a ginormous dusty old attic, filled with many many boxes that we almost never open or alter.
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