We Don't Know What Other People are Capable of Achieving

If it is so hard to know what someone is, and it's irrelevant anyway, why do we do it? We classify people in order to know what to expect from them and how to handle them. When we first meet people, we don't know much about them. We listen carefully to what they say, we watch what they do, and see if they do what they say. But at some point, we decide that we know them and put them in a box with the other people like them. And they act like the other people in the box, or so it seems to us. But people don't fit in boxes, especially small ones.

Classifying people limits our expectations of them and the opportunities we give them. Think of a slug. Once you know it's a slug, you know it can't dance. It doesn't do any good to teach a slug to dance either, because they're not capable of it. And even if you say a slug dancing, you wouldn't believe it, because slugs can't dance. But, then again, have you ever seen the sea slug called Spanish Dancer?

People shouldn't be limited by their classifications. All of us have lived with our own limitations our whole lives. We know how to compensate for them. We know what we can do and what we want to do and what hidden talents we have.