People as Mosaics

Firstly, thanks, all, for the birthday wishes!  I've been thinking about the wonderful people in my life, when I met some of you, how relationships grew and changed, and it invoked a thought or two.  

I was at a friend's house the other day, meeting some new folk and re-meeting some others.  At one point, one of their cats braved the people-filled room and was, of course, immediately loved on.  I remember someone saying that this cat reminded them of a male version of another cat of their acquaintance.  I had the immediate reaction in my head "well, that tells me nothing.  I don't know that cat."  But it definitely meant something to the person he was talking to, since they had some similar context.  When I got home and began to fill Andy in on the day's adventure, I told him about some of the people that I had met, referring to one individual as a composite of two other people that we know, working on the same principle.  

I've noticed other people do the same thing, now that I've been paying attention to it a little more.  I don't know at what point that we start to do this, but sometimes I describe people based on parts of other people I already know instead of their traits individually, even in my mind.  What I was left wondering, though, was if I was doing that new individual some kind of injustice, seeing them as a mishmosh of other people instead of appreciating them wholly for themselves?  Did I put them in a box too confining from the start?  At what point in a relationship does a person stop becoming a composite and become their own person in my mental categorization?  In other words, at what point am I far enough away from the mosaic to no longer see the pieces but instead get a glimpse of the whole image?  When did I know enough people to start doing this?  

Once I have experienced enough "colors" as traits--kindness, generosity, snarkiness, awkwardness, loudness, etc.--then an individual and what makes them who they are in my mind as a whole person is still comprised of those kinds of colored tiles, filled in through our mutual experiences.  There might be a bit of orange in there, but a lot more green, so that the overall color and picture ultimately frame a clearer perception of that individual.  Stating that they are part this person and part that person brings in a sampling of a specific color palate to mind immediately.  The mixing of these different palates is still its own uniqueness--so maybe there is no wrong in using this as a shortcut to highlight specific characteristics that I think of when invoking one individual to describe another.  

...but that his still assuming that the listening party has the same impression of the invoked individual as I do.  

I suppose there isn't a harm in using people as complex adjectives as long as I continue to remember that no one fits in a box I put them in and they should be given the same grace and freedom to grow and change as I would hope that they give me, an ever-expanding mosaic of color, traits, and shared experiences.  That a person could be an untranslatable adjective follows, too, in wondering what colors I bring to the table when I am used in such a way, but that's enough overthinking for now.