Something crept in….

       

Reading gives you a new perspective on life. It makes your life seem so much better when you see an octogenarian in a book feel nostalgic and reminisce his bygone days wth a sigh. At present he has constipation, can’t pass urine without the aid of a nurse. There was a time when he would sleep with his maid on a whim and drink to his heart’s content. Now drinking is more done to pass away time in the evening than for frolicking.

Im still in my youth, and I wonder whether once we become senior citizens, do we change our lifestyle and way of thinking. We take our youth for granted and feel as if none of us would become old. We act as we are immune to the vagaries of time.

Not only books but even random online surfing can sometimes enlarge your thinking.

“I hated labels anyway. People didn’t fit in slots–prostitute, housewife, saint–like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

I was browsing some of the quotations from White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Aprarently, I was watching a movie called The Age of Adeline and just came across the name of this book in one of the scenes. It caught my immediate attention. The above quote kind of spoke what is in my heart most of the times. That is my philosophy of life. I don’t label people because we all change and assigning permanent value to someone is totally unfair to them. Even rocks metamorphose over a period of time, humans after all are beings with emotions, who change every single day.

I hate being labelled by anyone. But mostly people love to give you a name that kind of accompanies your character wherever you go. They love to call you as that even if they meet you after a long time. They don’t realize that you have changed and it comes across a surprise to them. Change is the only constant yet it comes as a shock to many.

When someone labels you, they are indirectly telling you they lack the sixth sense. The difference between human beings and animals is that we are prone to adapt our thinking and nature as we evolve, if someone cannot acknowledge that, they seriously are emotionally handicapped.

Labelling people can be a reasonable reflection of their behaviour at a certain given point but that cant form the basis of the essence of their character as a whole. I came across this in Psychology Today.com. I felt it to be so true. For instance, if you are known as a murderer, you could be just someone who happened to murder somebody on an impulse.. That doesn’t make you a murderer. Is all that there is to you as a person ? While indulging in putting labels on someone’s character we forget that there is more to them than the foundational act upon which we gave an ‘insignia’ to their personality.