Familiarization: Pigeonholing; Part 1

Well I suppose in these first few days of actually having a blog, I haven't really gotten to any main points of what I was wishing to talk about on it, so here we go. Maybe there are a few habits here and there that you readers might be able to take away, and apply to your lives, just so that your'e a little bit more aware of what's going on in your surroundings. Remember, the first step is to familiarize yourself with a potential... problem doesn't seem like the right word here, but I'm sure as we go along we'll find a better word to use.

In this initial little ramble, you may be thinking "What the hell is he on about? What's all this business with familiarization and trying to find potential problems? I'm fine!", but the whole point of this process isn't to try to cut yourself down and be degrading; it's more to note things that you could become aware of, and then improve yourself from there. I'm talking about things like:
1. Trying to eliminate as much prejudice from your life as possible
2. Being aware of emotions and how you display them
3. Being a little bit more educated in matters of society.

In today's blog we'll go through the first point; over the next few days I'll post up the second and third parts to this :) But try to take these lessons to heart, and see if you can apply them in your daily lives. Unfortunately a lot of the time, it is quite difficult to erase negativity associated with certain areas, but try it out and see if it makes a difference in your life.

Eliminating prejudice (pigeonholing)
One of the most important things I feel in life is an ability to understand the flip side of the coin; throughout life we're constantly meeting new faces and being exposed to new people, and even if it is a fleeting encounter, we tend to form a judgement based upon face value rather quickly. We can tend to pigeonhole groups, and associate emotion with them (hence the second point); whether these emotions are positive or negative remains.

Think about the groups that you've associated negatively with the pigeon-holing. Are all of the people in that group necessarily that way because they choose to be so? Let's use the rather sensitive issue of obese people; admittedly, some of them over-eat, but when are we actually educated at a young age to not eat that much? When I was young, I was told to eat as much as possible because I was a growing boy! Only as I grew up did I strongly supplement this with a rather brutal exercise regime; had I not, I would have probably joined the population of slightly larger people out there. But that doesn't justify being particularly rude to people; as was noted in a particularly disturbing article the other day, and a lot of prejudice, including overt racism, manages to creep its way into our society. Generally I feel that Australian society is doing a pretty good job at educating and keeping this to a minimum; but just a little bit more sensitivity please!

But why try to eliminate the prejudice completely? Doesn't it help to pigeonhole the nerds, the jocks, and the musos? By pigeonholing, we turn down one of the central tenets of life; that each person is born an individual and raised to remain an individual. Not saying that it completely eliminates it, but by pigeonholing (especially in negative circumstances), we prevent ourselves from meeting people who break the norm and help us to realize why we should be a little more understanding. Eventually, with more sensitivity to these encounters in life, you'll appreciate a more diverse world and become more tolerant of others. Just something to keep in mind... until part 2!

Try not to pigeonhole fellas! ...