Are You Your Labels? Part 1 of 2

Do you like to be labeled?

You may think that our sexual orientation, gender, race, or cultural background (to name only a few) aren't really labels.

"That's just who I am!" you might say.

Really?

While that may be true in some cases, the point is not the term "label" itself, but what we think of when we adopt certain labels.

Take fathers, for instance. While the outer expectations of what a father’s responsibilities are have changed over the past fifty years, many of the inner expectations or traditional values associated with fatherhood are still counted on to maintain stability in our society.

The purpose of this blog isn't to compare how that so-called "stability" may have gotten us into the mess we currently find ourselves in as human beings on planet Earth. What I mean by this is that we may “say” we see people one way, but our subconscious mind, or subjective consciousness, is still reacting to old habit patterns, stereotypes, and labels that are no longer politically correct or that do not explain who or what we or someone else is.

Try asking the question at the start of this blog to five people, "Do you like to be labeled?"

You’ll find that most, if not all, will assume the term label to which you may be alluding will be derogatory. That's not always the case.

I’m not sure why, but it’s a fun experiment, and quite telling in how someone assumes we might be labeling them.

While we may not like to be labeled, we are often guilty of labeling others. Have you noticed that when we meet someone new, it’s not uncommon for the questions to be steered in very basic directions:

Are you married?

What do you do for a living?

What kind of car do you drive?

Where did you go to school?

And on it goes. We get that information, pigpen-hole the person through classifications (labels), and create our judgment of the person.

I apologize to my foreign readers! You might be saying to yourself, “That’s SO typically American!”

And though I have just as much evidence as you that it is so, regardless of citizenship, that comment (just in case it sprang to your lips) is also another form of labeling. This is another example of how labeling is critical, not complimentary.

On the other side of this discussion are the labels we stick on ourselves and then, with tenacity, refuse to peel off when they are old and tired. The unhappily married couple must face the truth of their relationship once the kids leave home. The corporate executive or factory worker is forced to reassess her place in life after being laid off. Who are we without our spouses, our careers, or our homes?

I have become afflicted with so many labels that I have become invisible unto myself. - James Baldwin

So what purpose do labels serve?

We use labels to identify ourselves.

We use them to create comfort boundaries.

We may use them to limit ourselves and our experience of life, either intentionally or through our subjective consciousness.

As with most of our lives, we use them without even thinking; we label ourselves, without giving any thought to changing our paradigm of the situation.

According to Noah, George, and Charles (the boys otherwise known to us as Merriam-Webster), a label is:

A word or phrase used with a dictionary definition to provide additional information.

So what are labels?

Simply, a label is a way of categorizing ourselves or others.

Labels fall into three basic categories:

How we wish we were labeled. This is what we wish people would think about us. It is what we ideally envision for ourselves.

How we know we are labeled. This is what we hear others say about us, either directly (what people tell us) or indirectly (what we hear people say behind our backs). It is also what we can honestly admit about ourselves at our core.

How we hope we aren’t labeled. This category revolves around judgment, how others judge us (perhaps because of a difficult decision we might have made with which they did not agree), as well as how we judge ourselves.

Would you be willing to make a list of the labels you have for yourself today?

Do they serve you?

Is this the way you want to be known or remembered?

Perhaps today is the day we can ask ourselves, Am I my labels?

Once we answer that question, we will discover whether or not our labels enhance who we are or obscure us to the point of being invisible to ourselves.

I'll leave you to your list and these thoughts. In just a few days, I'll be publishing Part Two of this mini-series. Till then...

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