People can have very fixated images and perceptions of others. They may shoe-horn others into well out of date perceptions. How they remember them can be stuck in a time warp.
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We are watching a TV programme with Eddy Redmayne acting as The Jackal. Even though he is not the same actor, I keep wondering where Wellard or Well Hard the dog is. At the moment in the series highly armed MI6 agents have just been engaged in a massive shoot out near Budapest. The sort of thing that is likely to be an international incident but which serves for dramatic purpose.
Not everything makes sense.
It is very easy to get typecast in the eyes of others. There could be a wildly inaccurate narrative circulating which sticks like glue. Once a visiting Japanese postdoc. famous for his drinking prowess back home decided that he wanted to out-drink me competitively because he had heard my legend. We started drinking after I had already had six pints of Stella unbeknownst and unrevealed to him. I stopped drinking a bit before him and he claimed victory. So there may be a story back in Japan of how he beat a champion drinker in the UK. Not all stories are true but it does not stop their circulation.
People can have their perception locked, very locked.
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Many are not a lot like they once were. Some people change. It is said that the warrior’s path is one of transmutation, transformation and transfiguration. This suggests that the change may be more radical than a cosmetic tinkering.
I’ll wager were I to meet people I was acquainted with two decades ago they would initially interact with me using that out of date context, if they even remembered me at all. There is and was a whole side of me of which most were completely unaware. One student thanked me for my 9 AM winter morning lectures because they gave them a chance to catch up on their sleep in a nice warm lecture theatre. Others have told me that they doubted that boring dead-pan me could be any use to them when they were unwell. After half an hour of quiet chat they were off to see the GP for a mental health consultation and had provisionally booked a session with the on campus councillor.
Few would imagine that I have had dreams of shaman and Jaguars.
People struggle to a) notice and b) fully accept change in others, particularly those who they think they know well. Radical change is considered impossible. After all a leopard cannot change its spots.
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Dreamyoga 