Boxes

Some people freak out if you do something different than what they would predict. Like, if you are generally conservative but are liberal on one issue, or you don't usually dress up and one day you do. Pleasant surprise would be one thing. To think "oh, this person is broader than I thought"; I wouldn't mind that at all. But to have it rock their world and sort of create this crisis where they don't know what category you should be in now, that drives me nuts. I HATE it when people try to put me into some category. I mean, its useful for getting to know someone, but don't lock me in, PLEASE! This is the reason for my partial dislike of Myers Briggs, even though I do think its useful. (If you're curious, I'm an ENTJ... 33%,39%,22%,22%, respectively. I'm proud of these low numbers and would like to get them lower). So, anyway, I thought I'd share this quote (kindly provided by Agatelamp) that captures so nicely what I think about these boxes we put each other in:

(From "Lolita"): "I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen "Kind Lear," never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus x will never compose immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can z betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen." (Next Older) (Next Newer)