Outside the Box

The other day I was visiting with a friend who happens to be a 6'6" athletically built black man. He was telling me how often people come up to him and ask what position he plays in basketball or which team he plays for. Some people say it jokingly, just to have something to say. And some people have actually pestered him almost to the point of harassment trying to get information that doesn't exist out of him. He has participated in many sports at truly competitive levels and been quite successful at them, but basketball is one he has only played recreationally. Still, people see him and immediately make an assumption about him. Notice, they don't ask if he plays basketball. In their minds, they are already confident of that fact and it's only a matter of filling in the details. They put him in the box they want him to be in so they can make sense of him, so they can get him to fit their narrative. 

As my friend and I talked about this, we recognized that people do this all the time--sometimes with regard to race, sometimes gender, sometimes age, sometimes appearance. Really, it could be anything, and it happens in romantic relationships, in work relationships, with friends and family, and even with strangers. Unfortunately, many of our assumptions are much less complimentary than thinking someone may play for a professional basketball team. I have shocked many of my co-workers and customers when they have found out I have a college degree (in biomedical science nonetheless). After all, why would a woman of my age be working at Starbucks if that was true? It doesn't fit their narrative. It doesn't make sense to them. I don't fit in the box they had constructed for me. And assumptions can get much worse than that. It's one of the reasons our country still struggles with racism and why politics can get so ugly. It's why all relationships can be a struggle. Our brains have a need to make sense of things and people and are very good at constructing boxes to help us do that. But the problem with this is--whether we are joking or making small talk or being dead serious, and whether we are expressing our thoughts or keeping them to ourselves--when we do this to people, we become unable to see them as they are and can only see them in a way that makes them be what we need/want/assume them to be. And not seeing a person as they are is the beginning of disrespect. 

I have certainly been guilty of approaching people with the boxes I've built for them more often than I would like to admit. But one of the really cool things about brains is that they can be retrained. Thought processes can be changed. And boxes that have been constructed can also be deconstructed. But it takes work and practice. We need to start to notice when we're making assumptions, when we're creating unrealistic expectations, and when we're trying to make a person fit a narrative we have in our heads (whether we're telling a positive story, a negative one, or a neutral story that simply isn't true). 

Many of us may be trying to figure out others because we've never really figured out ourselves. How arrogant of us to assume we know who or what other people are when we don't even really know ourselves! But we can combat this by sitting with ourselves and trying to know ourselves by digging deep and pondering and analyzing our thoughts and feelings, even though that may be an uncomfortable process. This will do a couple of things: 1. It will take up a huge amount of time and mental focus, which will make it harder for us to have the energy to construct boxes for other people, and 2. When we really and truly know ourselves, we don't need to try to make sense of someone else or get them to fit in a box that makes us feel some sort of way. We can just let them be who they are because we will be confident in who we are regardless of who they are. When you read business books that talk about being successful, there is always some version of "think outside the box" advice. It holds no less true in our relationships. When we approach people without a label or an expectation or a "box," we will have the pleasure of really knowing them and will free ourselves of the pressure to have to make them fit. This will only create stronger, healthier, and more successful relationships. I'm working on putting down the various boxes I carry around because I truly want to see people as they are and not only as I imagine them to be.