(Phlog post  headers... I  like them visually,  but recently
I've had limited  time, and having to put a  header up there
in a  particular format is  more annoying that I  figured it
would be. Goodbye header, until life is more calm.)

When you move to a new  place, you necessarily meet a lot of
new people. Even if you're not really looking for them, they
find you. There's some kind of psychological pull that makes
established people want  to reach out to  new people, though
I'm not sure how to label it.

I've been meeting  a lot of new folks.  For whatever reason,
my brain  wants to attempt  to associate the new  folks with
the folks that I already know,  or once knew; the old folks.
I'm not  talking about age  at all, of course,  just newness
and oldness of knowing and understanding.

Clearly,  there  is  no strong  and  consistent  correlation
between how  a person  looks, and how  they think,  feel, or
behave. I say that as if  I've done some kind of researching
or at least web searching on the subject, but I have not. It
is my  opinion that there  couldn't possibly be more  than a
loose correlation.

And yet, my  mind seems to want to  reflexively judge people
that  I see,  based on  people that  I've known  previously.
Recently,  two individuals  come to  mind. I  met them  here
where  I am,  and they  reminded me  of people  I once  knew
previously where I used to be. Immediately, I thought I knew
these people in some way.

This is prejudice. I didn't know these people at all, I only
saw them  and figured that  they might be similar  to others
that looked like them. To be clear, since there is quite the
hubbub about  racism, I'm  not talking  about skin  color or
nationality,  I'm talking  primarily about  facial features,
general  behaviors, and  the other  things that  make people
personally recognizable.  I was prejudiced based  on someone
looking like someone else. New folks and old folks.

Thankfully, I'm  speaking in  the past  tense. This  is both
because I'm relating  a story that happened a  few days ago,
and because the problem has been resolved.

As I  said, there were  two individuals specifically  that I
had judged,  who stand  out, perhaps,  because I  had judged
them harshly.  As it  happened, I had  the opportunity  at a
social function to spend some  time talking to these two new
folks, and I found out  quite quickly that they weren't like
the old folks that they reminded me of.

I'm  a  religious sort  of  fellow,  and  I feel  that  it's
morally wrong to judge people  without knowing them. I don't
subscribe to  the notion that  a man  ought not to  judge at
all, just  that a man ought  not to judge unfairly.  And so,
when  I got  to feeling  that  I had  unfairly judged  these
people, I thought in my heart "I'm sorry that I judged you,"
and I had  a amicable feeling toward these new  folks that I
was just getting to know.

Interesting to me, I also  had some amicable feelings toward
the people that I had known previously, the old folks that I
had compared these  new folks to in my mind.  I thought that
perhaps I had  misjudged them, and that if I  had taken more
time to sit and talk, I  might have found out that they were
different than I thought.

It  would  be wonderful  if  these  sorts of  small  lessons
created large changes in a man like me. I hope that they do.
More  likely, small  lessons  will have  to  be learned  and
re-learned for  years before I really  change. But hopefully
in writing this  one down, I'll keep it in  my the next time
the new folks remind me of the old folks.