Perception is Everything

I’ve always found it interesting to see how people perceive others. One question that I seem to get asked a lot at the moment is “Wait, how old actually are you?” When I tell them that I’m 20 they usually respond in one of two ways. The first is that they go “Oh, I thought you were younger than that.” The second is that they go “Oh, I thought you were older.” Now for me it seems like as a general rule those that are younger than me assume that I’m younger and those that are older than me assume that I’m older. Though one particular friend of mine the other day as we sat in the car talking about being adults looked at me and laughed and the simply said “You are not an adult!” Though in their defence I do seem to spend a great deal of our conversations going “I swear I’m not 6 really.”

Another thing that interests me is how our perceptions can alter how we think of people. I have a friend that I made recently who went to the same school as me, however when we were at school we never even spoke. Now there were a few reasons for this, they were in a different year to me, they were loud, involved in school sports and pretty attractive and therefore I would have automatically avoided them. When we met recently all I could remember about them was that we’d gone to the same school and as it turns out we’ve become pretty good friends and get on really well. However, if I’d have remembered who they were from school then I never would have started up a conversation with them in the first place.

I feel like there’s a moral in that story about not judging people before you actually get to know people and it kind of scares me how it was something that I hadn’t even realised I had done and I probably wouldn’t have realised if I hadn’t made friends with someone I would’ve previously judged based on just how they appeared at school. It makes me wonder just how many opportunities we miss purely through the preconceived notions we form of people without ever actually getting to know them.

Sophie x

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