Stereotypes: Imaginary Or Real?

There was a session at my workplace on stereotypes and similarities. What the hell I thought! Is it real that we meet people in life who are similar to other people from our past? I didn't want to believe that nobody was unique. He spoke about how there are a maximum of 150 stereotypes that an average man has seen in his life. That was spoken on Friday and obvious fact is that the thinker in me had a whole weekend to think about how many stereotypes I had met in my life. Alas! I was shocked.

I made a conclusion. The conclusion is that there is no minimum or maximum number of stereotypes in the world. It was just equal to the number of people we knew really well. People included in that list are family(closest ones: parents and siblings), best of friends, worst of enemies and miscellaneous(every person who had touched your life in ways you never knew)! Voila! I had my list of people stereotypes.

Is there any human being who has lived a life without making the statement “Gosh! You are so similar to another person I know/knew”? I am sure it is impossible to have not drawn similarities. It is the amusing function of the brain to connect unconnected dots. I think I also understood why the brain does that. Known devil is better than unknown angel.

They say that the most complex(a.k.a intelligent) of people and the most complicated of organisms are shy creatures. Hence the introvert brain(I don't know which side of MY BRAIN is an introvert!! Exceptions exist I guess!) in man does not want to relive a torment similar to the first day of school. What about First Day at school? Too many people equals too many new faces equals Stereotype Sample Generation- First Cut.

After a certain number of years the social side of the brain turns off and enters into Introvert Mode and starts mapping people to older stereotypes. This makes interaction with the new faces much more at ease because something tries fooling the brain(I am not a doctor but it is the soothing hormone. Natural pacifier! Docs please comment! :P) saying it is a familiar breed(already identified group) of people.

Once we place people in their respective segments, we start judging and predicting their behaviour. Or should I say we hope that what we predict from past experiences only happens and hope that we are not rudely surprised. In my life I have about 20 types of people I have met. To facilitate recognition first thing I do, I ask for birthdays. Zodiacs!

There are just 12 zodiacs but they help in placing people under s broader classification of people. Apart from all these categories, when I bump into another similar being of some category, I realise that they follow a similar pattern in perception to some emotions, attitude and appearances and the most important is that their family environment and choice of parters is also similar!

After pondering about all this over the weekend, I feel like I am the 18 year old me sitting amidst the many people who touched my life in different ways. I hope I don't do anything stupid like running and hugging them or something similar! If changes and differences are inevitable...is similarity escapable? It depends on how much you miss/like the person you associate the others to!!