Slap a label on someone and you’ll only see what fits on the label.

Labels are shortcuts that keep working long after they stop being useful. Once you have decided what someone is, your attention starts collecting confirmations and quietly discarding everything else, so the person gets smaller every week in your mind while staying the same size in life. They rarely get a chance to be new, because you stopped looking for new.

Take someone you have already summed up and give them an hour of fresh attention. Ask something you would ask a stranger. You may find they changed a while ago and you filed the update somewhere you never read.