Dear LPG

I have been thinking about something I have a habit of doing which is perhaps not fair, but that I am not alone in.  Have you ever tried to live by that old adage, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’?

People all over the world have a habit of taking a look at others and making their minds up about what sort of person they are on the strength of what we see.  Perhaps it is a thing that we learn to do subconsciously;. The way a person dresses has a way of forcing us to make our minds up about a person before we even make an attempt to talk to them. 

I remember my friend introducing me to her husband for the first time.  At the time he was in his 40s and he is very tall and big, he has hair in a ponytail which reaches a long way down his back and he was wearing jeans and a tee shirt.  Armed with the way that he looked and the knowledge that my friend is a fan of heavy metal music I decided that he was a club bouncer just because of the way he looked and what he was wearing.

As I said, they eventually got married and after 20 years he is a bit older but still looks and dresses in the same way, but I now know that he is a retired computer analyst and, in spite of his size, he would be more likely to be bounced by someone at the door of a night club than to be able to do any of the bouncing.

 The thing that bothers me is that we judge people on the way that they look all the time and we often are never introduced to them which means that our perception of them never gets a chance to change. 

So I have decided that, even though we are well into this year now it is time for me to make a necessary but not so new year resolution (if I wait till next January I will never get started!),  so I have decided to do my best not to prejudge people purely on the strength of what they look like.

As a post script I wonder what sort of a person people think I am when they first see me.  (I am not sending a picture!)

CB, Telegraph Hill