Often you find the world operating within mental clusters of people of a certain demographic or psychographic. And before you know it, you feel you’ve been put in a box. Suddenly you’re a miniscule part of a wide brushstroke and you’ve not just been painted in but painted into a corner. You’re now one of many – and it is an assumption that the many think as one.
There are these subsets of society we are supposed to neatly fit into, categories we unquestioningly need to conform to. A lot now depends on you and how you respond.
For example, I can choose to see myself as not white, not male, not young, not a citizen of the first world. I can feel I am at a disadvantage in an industry that is often known to be an all-boys-club. I can feel like a fish out of water when I live and work in geographies outside my own. Or … I can respect my skills and talents, the added value I bring to the table, the dual benefits I can bring by being in and out of the invisible but unmistakable lines of the confines I seem to have been placed in.
And suddenly, I am so much more than I was credited to be. I can achieve so much more than what is therefore expected of me. I have so many more faceted than a six-sided imaginary and inadequate space. I am that penny-dropping moment, the earth-shattering revelation. For me to recognise a box, the world has to become cuboid.
That said, we’ll get into views on social stereotyping as we go along…