Like a previous blog, this isn’t written by me, but I’d be interested to see what you reckon;
After a brief email conversation with a friend about what Father Christmas was going to bring me this year I was told, or defined if you will, that I was “too picky”… you see I only want an island and not a whole country as my present lol. In my defence to being labelled as picky I suggested that this friend was actually an easy person to please which is why they consider me to be picky; because they are comparing an aspect of my character to that of their own – and if you were watching carefully then you would have noticed that I just compared their character to my own too… here comes the point (thank feck you’re all thinking)… when we define another person, be it positively or negatively, are we actually unknowingly defining ourselves? Look at it this way, I was defined as being “too picky” which suggests that my preferences in certain matters are clearly noticeable to others, and for someone to notice this perhaps they need to be less picky, or more easily pleased, than myself and therefore have someone to make this comparison with. If the person that suggested I was picky was actually even more picky than me then they wouldn’t notice my pickiness (it’s like a tongue-twister lol), instead they might consider me to be easily pleased because compared to them I would be – hence why I suggested that my friend was easy to please because in comparison to me perhaps they are.
So where the Definer started off by defining the Defined they unwittingly became the Defined themselves…