Unveiling the Essence: When Perception Meets Proximity

Over time, I've come across different people, and for these different times, I've been seen in different lights; from my dressings, my physical appearance, how I sometimes don't indulge people, and so on. These give people the leverage to look at me and assume my personality without getting to know me, and more often than not, they're always wrong in their assumptions.
I love to be dressed and always look classy, which gives the wrong impression about me. Lest I forget, I braid my hair, and I've ear piercings. These would give anyone, especially in our world (Nigeria), a preconceived notion about me, and really, I don't fault them most times, just that I feel we've grown past this way of assuming without asking or finding out.

image generated using gemini AI

I was at a church gathering, particularly sometime last week. It wasn't that the church doesn't allow people who look like me to serve with them, but for some reason, someone approached me and wanted to know why I had my hair braided, saying it's spiritually not right and all that, basically trying to preach to me. The moment I opened my mouth to respond, the person was stunned and, I'd say, dumbfounded. Why?! Because they didn't expect me to be biblically sound, even have a defence, or even have the intelligence to speak the way I did as regards the discourse. It ended up in a long conversation that even went far from the initial discourse to a deeper conversation about God and the church in general.

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Now, that's a clear case of someone who had a wrong notion about me because of how I looked, but on close contact, they found out it wasn't what they assumed. We ended up exchanging contacts, and the person has reached out to applaud me for having that conversation with them and also said they wish to have more and to see me on stage sharing my testimony of transformation.