Mullets and Biases Oh My

I ran into a guy at Starbucks with a mullet. At first I didn't know how to take it. I was both amazed and amused at the same time. So I sat down at the table next to him with my Venti Ice Green tea with 3 splenda. He was enjoying a Grande Colombia Nariño Supremo.

In my mind a picture unfolded of who I perceived this guy to be: He's not married-He rents a room from his mom-He works for a small Auto Parts store-stocking Delco Water Pumps. Call it a hunch but I got this guy figured out-or do I?

As I was studying the mullet without posing as a stalker-I realized I had a bias towards men, who were stuck in the "Joe Dirt" world of the 1980's- you know in a failure to launch kind of way. But for all I knew this guy could be a Superior Court Judge. We all have a certain bias about life-it's how we perceive things to be. We lean a certain way or we have tendencies to respond to people based on our experience and beliefs about them.

Sometimes reality confirms our biases-like if a guy is comes at me with a knife I'm biased to believe this isn't good. I'm not sticking around to see if he's going to butter my toast or slice my throat-other times my bias clouds reality. Like the guy with the mullet, I perceived him one way-but was it accurate? I was seeing him through his mullet and making assumptions.

So with this in mind I turned to the guy and said "I haven't seen a mullet in years-pretty cool". We began a conversation. He told me his name was Rick and he played in a band. I found out that he was married and he had two kids and although he didn't work in an Auto Parts store-he did change his own oil.

Our biases are filters of the psyche-they're neither good nor bad-its how we act upon them. I'm open to check my biases for accuracy. Maybe learn something new. I'm not an ideologue-I'm always finding new and fascinating things about people along the journey of life. It was a good thing to see Rick through who he was and not through what I perceived him to be-mullet and all.