The Mental Boxes We Create For Others
A couple of years ago, my wife was interviewed by a Radio presenter from outside of Africa. It was a Zoom interview, so I set up the camera and microphone and remained behind the camera to ensure everything was well-connected throughout the conversation. When they were done, the presenter asked for me; she wanted to say hello off camera. Those are not really things I like to do, but I agreed. So, I sat there just having a quick how-are-you chat with her. She started asking questions that I didn’t find relevant and thought were not necessary for an introductory chat. I tried to give as many answers as I could without having to sound like I was not really into those questions. A few minutes later, we were done.
Later, when I was doing the edit of the video, I asked my wife what she thinks about all the questioning that the presenter was asking earlier. She just said casually, “She was trying to fit you into a box”. A box! That sounded weird to me at first until I had time to think about it more deeply, and then I realized that what she said was true. The presenter was simply trying to fit me into one of her mental boxes, which in turn will become how or what she thinks I am as a person. In other words, she knows my wife because they have interacted several times before the interview, but now, she wanted to know the guy behind all her videos and then maybe put a tag of identity on me based on the answers to the questions she was asking. I know this might sound kind of not straightforward, but I am sure you will understand all I am trying to say as I continue.
I have learnt a whole lot more about how this mental boxing of people works through the interaction or non-interaction of my young son. Each time I see it happen, it always blows my mind.
On this occasion, we had gone for a function in a popular hotel somewhere in Nairobi, and after the event, we joined the others for some bites. Most of the people were people my wife and I knew, but who had not met our then nine-month-old son. So, when someone tries to say hello to him, he would just hold back and grab his mum’s neck. A simple thing you will expect from a baby. But that became where my learning about how people box others became very real. I stood with one of the guys who came for the event, and we were just saying hello; we had not seen each other for a while. Then he asked me, “How come your son does not like people or allow anyone to come near him? It seems he is not used to people”. I had only a split second to think and also respond to the question. So I said to him “Well it’s not that he does not like people it’s just that he is not used to a crowd of people all around him at once.” “But why do you expect him to be used to people when his parents don’t go out too often. We work mostly online and that means we don’t have to be outside the house to do our daily activities”. Then he said, “But he could come to our place where there are more kids, so he can get used to other children”. My response was, “How can the child come to your place when the parents are not invited to come?” That was the end of the conversation.
Later that day, when we got home, my wife told me of another experience she also had in the same event, but this time with one of the security guards of the hotel. I think she had wanted to carry him or so, but the child refused. Then the guard said something like “The child didn’t want to come to him because he is a coward”. I was so pissed off with that statement that I wished I were there when he made such a senseless comment. I would have reported him to his management immediately. The story continues.
We have had to be at some other functions where the people had expected to have some interaction with my son. But because the young man is very much like me, he will study you for a while before deciding whether to come to you or not, and they all mostly decided to have opinions about him. One said the child is “too clingy to his mother”. Another one said that the child is “moody” just because he was fussing about sleep and the many distractions around. And many other unkind words to a child who was barely one year old. Now in my head, I am thinking, how many of these people and the others that we have interacted with who are making trash talk about a one-year-old child will meet a total stranger on the street and hug them with a smile? I guess none. So why would they expect a child who is barely a year old, who has never met them before, to be hugging everyone he sees? I could not put a sense to it, because for Christ’s sake, you are a stranger to the child and the child is a stranger to you, so you cannot make any opinion about him because you just don’t know him. Period.
Sadly, this seems to be how our society has been redesigned. Quickly put people in mental opinion boxes so that you can find some ways to relate to them or even control them based on your own limited knowledge about who they are. To be candid, I think it’s just another indicator of how much humanity we have lost in our society and how deeply unsettling we become when we are not in control of the things around us. My question is, why can’t a child just be a child and an adult be an adult, and let them get to know each other with time, without anyone trying to tilt the balance? It does not make sense. I am just using my son as an example of a bigger and deeper issue in our society.
We met some friends sometime back, and while having a conversation, one of them asked me why it is that they can’t read me. I actually found that sentiment very disrespectful. So, in my head am asking, why would you want to read me? So, you want to read me so that you can have a projected opinion about me based on your limited knowledge and understanding of who or what I am? What happened to taking the time to know me based on time spent together and true friendship? But it’s all mental boxing. If I can’t understand you, then I must find something in my arsenal of mental boxes to tag you with so that I can find a middle ground to relate with you. But that is sorcery and manipulation of realities.
Sorcery and the spirit of manipulation
Words, thoughts, actions, images, intentions, etc., are all energies that can be formed and projected into others and, by that, control them or their realities. And this really is how sorcery or witchcraft works. Create mental energies and then project them through word spells. So, when you say a child is a coward simply because he refused to allow you to carry him, what do you think you are doing? That’s casting a spell using words. And it’s even worse when such people decide to keep that wrong projection as a permanent opinion about the child. So, the day the child decides to go to them, you will hear them say something like “oh you are a good boy today, not a coward”. How in God’s name did you think he was a coward in the first place? That’s wickedness if you ask me.
And most of the time, such scenarios of using words wrongly might be seen as just jokes or being funny. But sorcery and mental energies do not know jokes.
Building a better society
In truth, in the African community setting, the child is more or less the child of the community, and everyone contributes to their training and knowledge gathering. So a child can learn how to make his first catapult from an older youth down the road or learn how to play the guitar from a neighbor’s kid. But all these are not done outside of true knowledge that comes from friendship. So we have more friends on Facebook who are just numbers in a system than we have real people who are really interested in knowing us.
