Categorization

If you wear red, blue and green (clothing) in mid-May, many eyes will roll and question your sense of fashion and sanity. A colleague has recently brought to my attention a behavior that I failed to recognize. She asked me whether I was celebrating an early Christmas that year since she saw me wearing a red, blue, and green dress during a time in spring.  I was totally baffled because what I bought on sale belonged to a certain category of celebration. That also raised a question of decoration and Christmas tree in spring season. I would definitely fall in the category of abnormality if I started Christmas decoration early this year. However, who decides what we wear and do at any given time.

Similarly to the event above, I decided to wear a yellow Pakistani traditional dress related to a wedding occasion (Mehndi) this Christmas. Everybody who saw my picture was a bit uncomfortable. The Pakistani friends who saw me wearing yellow asked me if I was attending a wedding on Christmas. Likewise, the friends and family in US asked if I did not know the color of the season (Christmas). I smirked at the idea of how people categorize others based on their prior knowledge and feel as if others who are not like them are falling away from the boundaries of normality.

Similar to my dress categorization, I have  experienced physical (racial) categorization. Many times street evangelists have tried to convert me to Christianity on the streets of New York City. I find it intriguing why of all people they try to convince me. They do not for one second ask me if I am Christian. They assume based on my look on the need of me to know about Jesus. I feel categorized!

I was born and raised as a Christian. I attend church on regular basis. However, just because I look a certain color and fall in a category, people sort me into the classification of a non-Christian who needs to know about Jesus. If not much, I definitely know I am aware of a lot of Christian traditions and the concept of personal relationship with Christ.

Formation of categorization is helpful in retrieving information. However, we need to understand that each individual itself is a category who is formed with different ingredients. Even siblings from the same parents are different. They probably end up acting in similar way due to the family traditions. I have some family tradition that I follow as a rule but remember following rules is not liberty. Each individual goes through life experiencing different contingencies. B. F. Skinner summed it up well! “I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always come up and made them for me. That’s what life is.” Life designs different experiences. Therefore, we should let people be who they want to be and not categorize them for who we want them to be!