Why Labeling Limits You

When you are a baby, your first instinct is to ask "What is that?"  You want to know three primary things about something....the name of it, what purpose does it have, and how it affects you.  Pretty simple concept. We want to understand people, things, and the world around us. In fact, I would feel fairly certain that this is all any of us do, all day long.  We want to define a person, an action, matter, a process....we are curious beings, I said this last week in Curious By Nature.  We want to learn about the world around us. I see my 12-year-old daughter doing this when she comes home from school and tries to understand cliques. I see this when my 5-year-olds look out the window and see a homeless man asking for money.  My entire premise for this blog is discovering the randomness of the world and making sense of it.  It's who we are to do this.

Labels, although they have the ability to indicate quality versus crap, which is always good to know when you are spending money,  CAN tend to exist as a symbol for shallowness.  Labels are everywhere.  What kind of car is that?  What kind of jeans are those?  What kind of phone is that? We are so used to labels, sometimes we forget that there are kids in the world who can't find clean water to drink.  We are all guilty of labeling, but have you ever wondered what is it about us that feels the need to categorize everything?  Is it just the way our brains work?  And how is it affecting us?  And what if we didn't do this, or at least decided to try not to?

Ok, so here's where I am going with this....Sometimes searching for a label limits you because some things are unique. If you slap a label on certain things, you miss out on what it actually is. We have all been brainwashed to believe that there is ONE way and that X means THIS and we have come up with all of these crazy ways to define things.....and it's all for our own security and sanity.  Really what we are doing though is boxing ourselves in and creating our own limits, not only for others, but for ourselves as well. 

I'll reiterate.  What labels really are are hints.  Labels are little clues that human beings use to place others into categories and think no further.  Labeling and leaving takes you off the hook at delving any deeper into a situation or a person.  Human beings are uncomfortable with the unknown and what they don't understand, so they look for ways to identify and name people to ease their own discomfort.

Let me give you an example......

Married, unmarried, gay, straight, swinger, freak, prep, loser, poor, rich, player, tease, Friends with Benefits, slut, hippie, weird.....

Ok, so I understand that these are all words, they are all characteristics or labels for a behavior or trait, and that they are as real as gravity.  However, what I am saying is that our need to slap a label on someone or something to make ourselves more comfortable is what is limiting.  Characteristics are not an entire definition of who a person is and I think that although people say they understand this, I see a lot of people not really caring whether or not they do it. 

Have you ever met a person, made an assumption about the way they look and then been wrong?  Have you ever been in a relationship that you can't quite define but you know it works for you?  GOOD!  That means you're open to people and you're living your life!  Don't be brainwashed by what everyone tells you about everything and everyone.  Labels are a security blanket that we wrap ourselves in because we are afraid that we will find ourselves in unfamiliar territory without a definition, then we will be lost. We prefer to have a prediction of what something is going to end up being. If you force someone into a category, you miss who they are.  If you force a relationship or situation into one with a label, you may miss out on what it is.