Who does the stereotyping anyway??

Why do people have stereotyped minds? And, who does the stereotyping anyway?
Throughout my stay in secondary school, I had to put up with opinionated people telling me I had to like football because I was a guy; I had to like rap music because I was black and young; I had to walk and dress in a particular manner to show I was hip, it was an endless list but I took it all in stride refusing to be intimidated. The final straw came in when a close friend of mine, or so I thought, said to me – “you are just a waste of height; you should be on the basket ball court and not acting.”
Sometimes, these setbacks happen to open our eyes to the reality we have failed to see. It is ironical that: this same friend told me off the very day I made an attempt at basket ball and swimming, the group of people that talked me into playing football where the same ones jeering and hurling insults at me when I made an attempt at a goal but missed . Being a sensitive person, I was greatly hurt by my friends and colleagues but at that moment with a pang of conscience, I remembered what my girlfriend had always told me – “No matter what, always seek to please yourself first, you can never please anyone – no matter how hard you try.”

“Often you don’t know how truly happy you were until you look back and realize how much worse things could have been.” (Nina Simone). On completion of my secondary school education, I opted to do the International Baccalaureate Diploma. One of my CAS activities was to interact with the patients at the Modupe Cole Memorial Home for the mentally and physically challenged children. The very first day my class-mates and I visited the home, we were moved to tears. The sight of the children (and some who are now adults) and the state in which they were being kept moved my body, soul and spirit. There was very poor ventilation in the hostels and as result, they had a foul stench that made me sick for days. The sight of children and teenagers who crawled on the floor with drooping saliva out of their mouths and flies hovering around them was definitely not one to behold. Their skin looked so tough that even a hatchet would not give them as much as a scratch. I all became too much to take when we were led to a room where children where chained to the floor and beds.
It seemed unreasonable and unfair that while these children were languishing in pains in situations they did not chose to be in, I was getting worked up because I failed to meet up with certain expectations people had of me; complaining bitterly about mundane things like clothes, money, shoes and other things which I never seemed to have enough of. That singular visit to the home changed my perspective of life. At the home, I discovered lives basic ingredient, love is this ingredient and because it is usually toyed with it has been devalued in the hearts of many people to the extent that it is regarded as a myth and no longer a feeling. The visits to the home made me ever grateful to God for making me who I am and the way I am. Above all, it made me appreciate my person and to learn to accommodate people irrespective of our different opinions and views. After all, the world will be such a boring place if it were filled with people having the same views and opinions.