Day 82 - Image

I was watching a John Travolta movie on the flight back from Singapore to Bangalore - From Paris with Love - in which Travolta was his usual self - a cocky, no nonsense, rebellious, stylish undercover cop blasting his way through a slew of terrorists with guns blazing and a cigarette dangling from his lower lip while his partner cowers in fright.

What an image!

And then I realised that this is how one thinks of John Travolta. Think back and you realise that the movies you loved him in were exactly in this image - Broken Arrow, Pulp Fiction, Swordfish, Get Shorty etc - are all about him being suave and sophisticated. He did try to do a 'Hairspray' but its difficult to imagine him like that now. Or Robin Williams is always funny.

Closer home we associate strict image perceptions for our actors and actresses as well. SRK is the lover boy and good man, Salman Khan is stylish, Aamir Khan is intense and so on and so forth. Its difficult for our actors to break out of their images and they find success with movies when they align themselves to the public perception of their image.

This got me thinking. Do we do this in our daily lives as well? Do we form images in our minds of friends, colleagues and then stick to those perceptions? "Oh don't give any work to him, he never completes things on time" or "You need to tell her a time that's way in advance of the actual meeting time coz she's always late" or "He's a nerd or a geek" and so on.

When the image perception assumption creeps into our daily lives it creates problems. We start assuming the decisions that the person will make. We start thinking about what the person may say and take that as a definitive answer without even asking them about it. "Don't ask him to work late. He never does". "Don't ask him to contribute money for the birthday gift. He won't do it" or even the other extreme "Let's tell him that everyone has given x coz he always gives 2x" and many such situations. We start making assumptions for others and that is always a dangerous situation.

This implies from generalistic assumptions about race, nationality, caste etc to even small ones about our family members, our work colleagues and our friends.

We are all human so we are all bound to form our opinions about people. What we need to guard against is that the image-perception does not color all our interactions with the person. We do not assume the decisions for that person and don't form hard-wired perception in our mind. Be open to the fact that each decision that a person takes could have a story or a reason behind it. Yes, sometimes even multiple similar ones.

Be open, be liberal.....it will help in the long run!