Day 84 - Modern

We often classify people as “modern” and “conservative”, “narrow minded” and “broad minded”, “worldy wise” and “ignorant”.

A person’s upbringing, exposure and education affects the person’s mental outlook and the way they perceive other people.

 I have been brought up in a family of extremely educated people..people who have travelled and seen the world and even to some extent..”not very judgemental”, but I have often heard these people make sweeping statements such as
“_____(particular caste)people are classy”
“people who follow _____ religion are dirty” and some more extremely ridiculous generalisations..like
people from a certain part of the world being arrogant,people with curly hair being intelligent and so on.

Since I grew up in such an environment, I grew up too forming some prejudices..some with a certain logic to it and most others purely based on certain whims.

 Not until I met a person who pointed out this particular ignorance of mine did I realize that some of these ideas were totally absurd and baseless.Such prejudices are not just stupid but extremely dangerous because I would brand a shun a person completely without even giving that person a chance to disprove me. Not only did it shock me that I wasn’t all that “open” as I thought I was but that these ideas put a hurdle to my trust on people and affected my peace and calm.At certain point when someone put me in a  bracket and refused to see the merit in me just because of the colour of my skin or the language I speak or the size of my body, is when I realized what a big mistake I had been committing all through in my life.

 The true quality of a “modern” person is not only that he/she does not “judge” other human beings but also that they refuse to make generalisations about a particular group of people and do not patronize/reject a person based on their allegiance to such groups.

 So the next time you see this popular description of a person as “Traditional person with a modern outlook” on a matrimony site, just take it with a pinch of salt.

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