It's never just "that person". It's "One of those people." We associate with others in like minded and shared need/want/admired groups because we don't like feeling lonely or being alone much, if not most, of the time. We become Team members, partisans on just about anything we can use to differentiate ourselves while still being part of a collective.
We take pride in our willfull associations and lament but still own the collective associations that are thrust upon us. There is no victimhood like shared victimhood. As we get older, we often get more comfortable in our collectivist associations. We fear losing our place or even status within said groups even while being unsatisfied with having been a part of it.
Fear is one of the greatest factors in collective association. Safety in numbers, being left out or "birds of a feather", etc...
But, at the same time, when we can an individual for just themself, we can see something much more than the caricature we created of them in our mind that reflects the collective we initially mentally associated them with. When we not only stop seeing others as just a skin color, a nationality, a sexual preference, a culture, and stop projecting ourself as simply one of those, hiding behind them, we start to see and be much more than an absolute reflection of something generic.
No one is actually an absolute representation of an ideology, a racial group, a physical presence. Yet and still, we let our tendency to collectivize others set them up to be the the best or worst of them.
Look for, SEE the individual. Make the effort, BE the individual. Stop just being one of many. Stop allowing yourself to be nothing more than a shallow reflection of what others want to see. Stop being the person that sees shadows and sees the person for who they actually are.
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