The Man in the Mirror PROJECT - Perceptions of Humanity

When I was a child someone told me not to talk to strangers.  In my head, I imagined a stranger to be someone like the guy pictured below.  A sinister look, dark hat and glasses, with a long black trench coat.  I had "other" pictures too, the "shoplifters", the "murders", "the Muslims", the "poor people", the "blacks", the "Jews", the "Catholics", the "Iranians", even someone "spiritual".  I had heard so many labels that inside my head, I began a subconscious dictionary of who these people were and apparently by my own perceptions, what they would "look like" as well.  I would know them if I came across "them."

My dictionary was shattered, however, time and time again.  When I was almost molested by a "stranger" that didn't have the black trench coat and realized my twin flame was one of the "blacks".  Somehow I was taught a mentality of "them" and "us."  That we should rightfully categorize people.  But are we correct?  Does labeling someone really help us differentiate who we should be aware of or is it just another division in our humanity?

If I asked if you were a murder and you said no.  I would have a tendency to believe you.  But if someone broke into your home and was hurting your child would you shoot the intruder and would that not make you a murderer as well?

Stranger - A subspecies of humanity

It's not safe or wise for us to put people into little slots.  A murderer, a stranger, or even a catholic, looks no different than we do.  Even if we say someone has a different color of skin, we are shunning our the truth.  For in reality the humanness that we are is in everyone.  The only things that make us different are the reasons we do things, our life experience, circumstance and upbringing.  I might be a Muslim if I was born in another country. I would be a shoplifter if my family was starving.  Some other people have different thresholds, different ideas about what is right, wrong, or even the way the world works.  It's our thinking that is different, not our humanity.

Knowing this allows us to embrace all people and reach our own conclusions.  I could have a Jewish murderer living next door.  But how dangerous would it be if I had already categorized him as a Jew instead of a murderer?   I might believe Jews don't murder and that they're rich,   Then as my Jewish neighbor appears at my door asking to borrow a cup of sugar, my perplexed self might let him in.  My mind might think; 

"Hey wait a minute!  He's Jewish.  He's rich.  He should have his own sugar!"  

The next thing I know, he shoots me in the back and takes all my money and jewelry.  Now my idea of the "Jews" is shattered.  Everything society has taught me, just proved to be wrong.  If I had paid attention to the humanness of him when he was "checking" out my home on his last visit, I might have realized.  But I didn't.  I labeled him a rich Jew and dismissed his humanness. 

The lesson for ourselves in this is that we should look at humans as humans; all with dysfunctions, all with different thinking and all with different beliefs.  In the end we'll find we are all also one thing: human.