Okay, not really. I can’t even drink alcohol without breaking out in giant hives. Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting this Blog to be a juicy confession.
I mentioned my Australian friend Helen on my About page. Don’t jump to conclusions, she’s not an alcoholic either. This post actually has nothing to do with alcohol. It’s about labels. Helen hates labels people stamp on their foreheads. Until she pointed out a label I casually used, I never gave it much thought. Labels smables…why should we care what people call themselves or others?
After giving the matter more consideration, Helen’s point of view is becoming more clear to me. Humans thrive on being able to call themselves something. I’m a manic depressive. I’m an alcoholic. I’m a shopaholic. I’m a Democrat. I’m a Republican. I’m a wife. I’m a homosexual/heterosexual. Our choices of what to call ourselves grows every day. The problem is, no person is one thing. When someone is defined by a label it opens the door for that person and others to limit him/herself to the category they’ve filed themselves under. That label becomes who they are from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.
Negative and presumably positive labels have the same unfortunate result. You can label yourself in a way that is so good, you ignore or fail to realize shortcomings and areas you can improve. “I am a Mensa; therefore, my actions are never stupid.” It’s hard wake up each morning a better person that way. You can label yourself in a way that is so negative, you fail to realize the positives and bright spots that give you the strength to climb over obstacles. That, too, makes it hard to wake up a better person than the day before. Since we are hopefully striving to become better citizens of the world and happier souls, it seems logical to me the answer lies in understanding and presenting our total person.
How do we pay tribute to our whole selves? I think it starts with putting an end to the “I am” statements of this world. Start talking about what you have versus what you are. I am an alcoholic becomes I have a problem with alcoholism. I am a wife becomes I have a husband. I am a Democrat becomes I have Democratic tendencies. I am an amputee becomes I have one leg. The list goes on. You get the gist. Sure, the things we have could be divided out as good and bad things/qualities. We are all composed of both. Recognizing the individual components that are good and bad in each of us is more just than sticking a label on someone’s forehead and putting their entire person in a good or bad category.
I’m not naive enough to believe we will ever be label free. However, we can strive to reduce the number of labels in circulation. We can also do our best to expand on the labels that are so ingrained in our society they are unlikely to disappear. A cyber friend of mine pointed out the seemingly innocent label of “I am a boy” or “I am a girl”. I mean, boy and girl is pretty basic, right? Wrong. More and more individuals are not feeling like the boy or girl they’ve been told they are. I’m a boy and I like playing with dolls. I’m a girl and I like Tonka trucks. We start grooming our boys and girls as babies to embrace the generalizations that go along with the label we’ve given them. Girl’s clothes are covered in pinks, ribbons and flowers. Boy’s clothes are blue and brown with images of tools and sports. Imagine if we could make being a boy or a girl less about personal preferences and more about anatomy. Is it possible we would see fewer people opting to have surgery in order to reclassify themselves under a label that fits their likes and dislikes? My cyber friend suggested that would be the case. I haven’t been able to find reason to disagree.
So, to wrap up this long rambling, my challenge to myself and you is to tune our ears to hearing the “I am” statements of this world. As you hear or make them, try changing things up a bit by shifting the “I am” to an “I have”. See if it changes the way you look at yourself, another person or a situation. This little shift in thinking, though still a work in progress for me, has changed my view of people and things dramatically. It’s been one of those “ah-ha” experiences that has made me a better person and mother. For that, I send a big American THANK YOU to my friend Helen.
I never even thought about that. Or maybe I have? My husband once called one of the stuffed animals that was given to Sean “gay.” How can a toy be homosexual? So we even attribute labels to inanimate objects. That’s beyond ridiculous. We can’t forget the Tinky-Winky outrage that occured in 1999 *shock*