Labels and price tags

As humans we are always trying to label everything including one another. If we find out someone likes sports...we think ok now i can put them into my jock category or people that do art/play music/or dance are artists who have weird personalities and the labels continue. An interesting thing about families...have you ever stopped to label your father mother sister or brother in the way you do to strangers or friends. No, not really other than the label of relation to you, you see them as a person, a unique person that can't be classifiable by words such as "emo, jock, artsy, etc.." yes you might use some of these words to describe them but it doesn't give a complete description of who they are. When we start labeling others in this sense you don't take into account the uniqueness of that person as a whole. You have certain expectations of what you think a person "like that" would do or what they would be like so when they don't exactly line up with your sterotypes it leads to maybe some frustration and confusion. I think this frustration or confusion is the best thing we can have because it makes us question how we always want to categorize people instead of learning about that one person in the way they were created to be uniquely themselves and not another person or group. Some places I know I have gotten into trouble with this is in new situations I have compared new friends to old ones. I thought it would help me understand or classify them better in my head but really people should not be classified. They should not be bound by sterotypical boxes or presets. Another example is judging people. I have gotten to know some amazing people over my short life and some of the greatest people who I learned to admire or love have done horrible things in their past. I didn't know this when I was first getting to know them. I saw them as they were in this moment, their current actions, their current words, who they are at the present and not who they were. Because I got to know them for the person they had become and not the person they were I had a better grasp on who the person was without invalid judgements from past wrongdoings. Later on when trust had formed in the relationships they shared some haunting and not so pretty things from their past. It is sad to say if I knew these things right off the bat when I met them I would label them as a nice person but not someone I would want to be friends with...yes I would judge them. This is not right, and something I must work on. However being friends with people and getting to know them before judging them (slash not judging them at all or placing them in one catagory) has taught me invaluable lessons on the value of a person. Each person is valuable in their unique way. Because one person is not the exact same as another or a group of people they are highly valuable. There never was, there isn't and there will never be anyone like them. How valuable one person must be then...