Every day, we look at people and things then make assumptions of them solely based on their appearances. From simple things such as grocery items in a supermarket, to more complex things such as people we want to spend the rest of our lives with. We make those decisions purely on what we see from the outside. But as with everything in life, what’s on the outside doesn’t always reflect what’s important.

When looking at someone we need to look beyond what they look like and look at the person that they are, are they good or bad. It is prejudice and discrimination when we judge others according to what we believe to be right or wrong – or according to our description of normality.

Look at the Miss South Africa Pageant for example, in order to be eligible for the contest you have to be beautiful, thus they discriminate against those who are less attractive. We expect to be treated equally, but this is not always the case. People that are more attractive are more likely to advance further and faster in their careers. This fact may not always be due to the fact that they may be educated or good at their jobs, most often than not it’s based from their looks. This is unfair to others who work twice as hard, but are not recognized because they may not be physically attractive as other candidates for promotions.

We live in a very superficial society. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of looking at people from the surface. Then we develop ideas about what or who they really are, without making the effort to get to know them better. This is where the famous saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” comes in. You can’t tell the quality of the contents of a book by just looking at its cover or the material used to hold it together.

A book with a plain cover and simple title may be more important, more entertaining or more useful than a book bound in a flashier manner. This metaphor can be extended to many situations in life. Perhaps the best example is the relationship between people. If you see a beautiful woman (or man) would you immediately pursue them before looking at an average person? In many cases a person looking for a significant other would. Unfortunately, the more average person may have a better sense of humour and more interesting outlooks on life. The prejudice of deciding what to do based solely on outward appearances could cost the pursuer the chance at meaningful relationship. Only by maintaining strict self-discipline, can we force ourselves to put these prejudices aside and look deeper into everything we do. Only by looking at the less obvious features can we know what truly makes an outstanding person, object or ideas. Then we will know it with confidence.

Most of us usually look at people and objects from the outside and judge it finally as they are, but we should always look at things and people with deeper meaning and then justify it. The original and true contents hide within. Generally in life, we see people try to show themselves as gentleman and ladies by their expensive clothes and colourful dresses. But they don’t reflect the original man/woman or manhood/womanhood. You can’t judge the book by its cover, unless you’ve walked a day in their shoes. As humans, we tend to get caught up in our own busy lives, that we never take the time to get to know the people around us.

We must look at a book, person or an object from the inside out. The originality of objects and people come from their inner side. So we should justify the “things” by their inner original content.