Day 71 - Two 'Innocent' Questions

As Indians we typically as two questions of a new person we meet. Think of it and play it in your mind. You've just met a new person, you've shaken hands with him and know his name. What are the next two questions you ask him?

Where are you from? What do you do?

While the questions by themselves are innocent, the reason for asking them are not. We tend to start slotting people into the small boxes of our judgment once we hear the answers. The ideal situation is to meet someone with an absolutely open mind and start making opinions about them after we have met them for at least a couple (I would say 25) of times. Oh yes, we do make opinions about people we meet - let's accept that - but the issue is that we make them the moment we get the replies to these two seemingly innocent questions.

Aggressive (North Indian), Conservative (South Indian), Business minded (West Indian) & Indian? (East Indian). Then we start thinking more details as we get to know the city and start linking the last name and the location answer. Opinions start getting formed in our mind. And then we hit the person and our small minds with the second question. The reply to that gives us enough ammunition to form a complete opinion of the person.

Oh! You're in marketing or sales or head some division (must have done well in school). You are a chef or a photographer (mustn't have done well in school). You are a painter, writer (do you earn enough? Do you need some money?). Our jobs seem to define what we stand for.

Have you ever thought why? Why do we do this? It goes back to my earlier post of Day 61 on 'Being Judgmental'. Its so easy to form an opinion about someone based on what we hear rather than based on what we experience with the person over a period of time. The fault lies in trying to speak to communicate with that person with a set opinion on our mind. We tend to take seriously the ones we perceive to be 'better' people based on our opinions. Or look down and be condescending to someone who does not live up to our opinion of a perfect person. How many times have you met someone at a party who you thought was not a successful person based on the replies and sought someone else? I have and therein lies the fault in us.

A photographer or a chef or an artist might have chosen that profession because they love what they do and do it with passion as compared to us who do our work because it is work. I wonder who is more happier? A South Indian may have some amazing innovative liberal ideas that we may pass over or never get to hear because we believe that the person must be a conservative one with 'old' ideas.

I think its time we stopped asking these two questions. Let's try to be non-judgmental and save our opinions about people for later. Our relationships will get better and our lives less complicated.