Being called a “bad person” is not something I would take lightly. It would hurt, it would leave me confused and saddened, because that label feels far from how I perceive myself. But, for someone I’ve wronged, especially if their only experience of me was negative, they might see me as just that –“bad.” But does one person’s perspective truly define who I am?
This flawed thinking that reduces people to a single experience or story is something we all fall into AKA stereotyping.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story, speaks about how our understanding of others gets limiting when we base judgments on a single narrative or story. She tried to tell us that no person, culture, identity or whatsoever can ever be fully captured in one story and yet, so often than not it ends up being exactly what we do.
If I could ask just one thing of everyone, it would be to pause, it would be to reflect, and to truly understand this idea. The next time you’re tempted to stereotype or pass judgment on a person or a whole community, consider how much you’re missing ,the depth, the nuances, and all the little “big” things that go unnoticed.
John Donne said and I quote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” We must resist the urge to reduce anyone to a single, incomplete story.
It doesn’t take much to be kind, to try and understand someone, but I assure you, it goes a vey long way. The impact your single act of kindness can have might just be the difference between the making and breaking of a person. So I ask again, knowing fully that it’s not up to me “I hope you’ll take the longshot and choose kindness.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ends her talk: “When we reject the single story, we regain a kind of paradise.
Let’s keep moving; hopefully toward a better future.
The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Credits
Adarsh I Jacob
2024-2026
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