Books without Covers

I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” This is still not an easy thing to do. As you scroll into a bookstore or browse amazon, you are primarily looking at which cover catches your attention. Only then are you interested in checking out the subject matter, the table of contents and maybe even read a few sample pages.

It’s only when you finally purchase the book and read it in it’s entirety do you get a better picture of what’s actually behind the cover. Sometimes, the book goes against those first notions. Books can be surprise you for better or for worse than you might have originally imagined. Either way, you couldn’t come to a true opinion of the book without spending time reading the book for yourself.

The same should be true when it comes to people. We profile, make judgments, place stereotypes, categorize, dismiss, label and make assumptions about people before we actually spend the time to know the person for ourselves.

Further, we take those initial thoughts and begin to find actions, attitudes and statements that we “use” as evidence for our profiling.  Naturally, I think we rarely make the decision to consciously and intentionally try to disprove our “theory.”  And left unchecked, we rob ourselves of getting to know someone great, someone we can learn from, someone with a different perspective, someone with an amazing story, someone living in struggle and tension, someone that is a real person just like us.

And the truth is that all people are people just like us.  Sure we are unique in our own ways, but we are still people. We are driven past experiences, current challenges, future hopes and personal desires to satisfy ourselves. So what can we do about this?

1) Admit that we are guilty of doing this.  Believing that we are not at fault and cast blame on others for our actions is not a good excuse.  We are not victims. We make decisions. Decisions to stereotype. Decisions to avoid getting to know the other person’s story, motivation and desires.  If you find yourself avoiding certain people, talking about those people behind their backs, identifying them as the one with the problem, or only keeping the relationship purely “business,” you’re busted!

2) STOP IT!

3) Use the same profiling, assumption-making, judgment-placing brain mechanics to begin believing the positive. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Let them be innocent until proven guilty. If they are a drama book, it might take a while to finish reading that book.  And yet even if they are guilty in your eyes, you can still treat them like you want to be treated…a human being.  Human beings like to be noticed, appreciated and understood.  Problems arise in children, teenagers, adults and especially in marriages when we feel robbed of being noticed, appreciated and understood.  We know that people won’t always agree with us, but as long as we get a fair trial, we’re fine with that.

This is something that is going to take a lot of hard conscious work. Be on the lookout. Don’t close the book before you finish and choose to read one that you might not pick up initially because of the cover.  And since we are all “books” as well, be willing to be opened up and share the story people are wanting to read.