As human beings, we constantly come into contact with other people in the course of running our daily activities. Some of the people we meet in a particular day may impact on our lives in the future and others may not even come across us again. We however seem to have a natural instinct of predicting whom a particular person might be, judging from the information we gather on meeting them the first time. This information we accrue are impressions created from the behaviors depicted by an individual as at the particular instance we are exposed to them. It is however very dangerous to judge individuals from their first impressions since not all we assume might be true. First impressions can therefore be very misleading.
In the movie, “The Pursuit Of Happiness”, the protagonist, as played by Will Smith was a very learned man, graduating as the best student in his class and being ingenious enough to invent his own enhanced x-ray machine which produced images, three times more vivid than that of a normal x-ray machine. He was however faced with the problem of unemployment and when he was called for a job interview, appeared looking shabbily dressed. The average person in the street, can clearly judge such an appearance as that of an unserious person who did things anyhow. He however impressed his interviewers immensely and went on to become one of the best stock brokers the company ever had. Had the men interviewing him judged his appearance or included it in their criteria for selection, then such great talent would have slipped right out of their hands and it was therefore very useful that they did not judge him from his first impressions but went on further to interrogate him .
Having heard a handful of love stories, I can confidently say that not all married people could tell who their spouses were going to be even after meeting them not only on the first day but several meetings after. My aunty first met her husband to be, at that time, on funeral grounds. The mood around the whole environment was therefore very gloomy and full of sad faces all needing consolation. After making her way through the crowd to view the mortal remains of the deceased, she realized there was a man sitting in his car, far away from the location and listening to joyful music. She thought to herself at that instance that the man was arrogant and numb to feelings and thus showed little or no emotions. It was only after interacting with him after the funeral that she realized the man had a phobia for dead bodies and was trying to take his mind off the situation. Could it then be that my cousins and their lineage will have been non-existent, had my auntie believed her judgment of the man not being sensitive and therefore not husband material? Obviously, it can be seen here that the little judgments we make on people based on their first impressions can have very enormous effects on future events and even sometimes change one’s destiny or dreams.
Soccer is another area where judgments made on first impressions could be misleading. Many footballers fail to impress or live up to expectation in their first year of transfer, especially when is from one country to another. The Ivorian international footballer, Didier Drogba, is by no exception an obvious example. In his first year of transfer to Chelsea Football Club, he failed to live up to expectation and this could be attributed to the fact that, he had not adapted well enough to the English style of play. However, due to the faith his manager had in him, he was given a constant appearance in the team’s starting line-up and this undoubtedly helped in the realization of his true talent and abilities.
It should be taken into notice that judgments made through first impressions are by no means intentional but are based on instances. This exposes us to the fact that there may be alternative ways of evaluating people other than using their first impressions. In cases where the impressions have already been created there can be ways of verifying such impressions. In the case of the movie, Pursuit of Happiness, one can tell that the interviewee was given the benefit of a doubt and he did indeed prove himself worthy. In my aunt’s situation for example, it was due to consequent exposure that led to the correction of her error. This can therefore be applied in all instances of first impressions. One can also say that it was through faith and consistency that led to the realization of the abilities of the Chelsea striker, Didier Drogba. In this case, then, we can say that even though some first impressions can be true, it may be temporal and due to circumstances and hence through belief and consistent enquiry or updates or even attention to such people we could help unearth their true potential.
It is a fact that here on G.I.J campus, many students have false impressions of their fellow students mostly due to their ignorance or a particular situation in which they have seen such people. The best we can do is to get closer to these people and try to know them better, instead of passing on little gossips and derogatory remarks about people we do not even know. Its called HATING, and honestly we’ve all been activists. Yes, that’s true, you’ve been a HATER before but do you ever put yourself in the shoes of your victim? How would you feel if someone who doesn’t even know you painted a bad image of yourself to other people and destroyed that strong reputation you’ve built all these years? To some extent you would then understand why some individuals are advocating for the re-instatement of the Criminal Libel Law. To guide the activities of what I call “malicious journalism”.
If what goes around comes around, then we should be careful of what we say about other people, because you might never know who may be talking about you or what they are saying. G.I.J is a small campus, news spreads fast and so we must make sure we know what we are talking about before we attempt to say it. Put this thought in mind the next time you say something about someone else and stop HATING…
KENNEDY TETTEH
