Unboxing My Authentic Life Story After Prison

We like to put things, especially people, in boxes.

We like to slap a label on that box and “know” what that person is.

Notice I said what, not who.

“What” is easy.

“Who” involves a deeper level of understanding most people aren’t willing to explore.

They’re either afraid to confront their own humanity or to let go of the box they stuffed someone into because that box provides comfort.

Because if we don’t know a person or know very little about them, they’re an unknown.

Maybe we only see a snapshot of how they’re currently behaving or how they behaved in the past. And if that behavior is something we believe we’d never do or be capable of doing, a part of us is frightened of it.

Our brains are nothing more than survival machines; they care about keeping us alive and propagating the species, and nothing more.

When we confront something or someone unknown, it’s a threat to our survival, so we seize the low-hanging fruit of a label to help “ensure” our survival.

We have our box with our label, and we feel safe.

Those labels are really judgments; they’re our opinions and definitions of a circumstance or individual.