Have you ever noticed we are all about labels in our society? No, I don't mean the kind printed by the little machines that you slap on your boxes and stuff away for storage...although a certain someone I know who reads this blog does a great job of labeling her boxes and storing them away for safe keeping (I'm still making it my mission to pull the labels off your boxes and mix them up and dump them out). Although labels have their place....in an office....we need to start doing more to remove them from our daily lives since they tend to segregate us and divide us.
We take every chance we get as a society to find ways to divide ourselves and pop on a label that makes us separate from each other and in the process we forget that we all share 1 label in common...we are human. While I'm all for celebrating the positive things that make us different, I'm also all for celebrating the things that should unite us. The labels are big and small - everything from our body types to our political parties...even the labels we slap on gender or sexual preference divide us.
I recently looked at a site that someone asked me to and while I agree strongly with what the site is looking to achieve I was struck by the mission statement. "Out of the shadows, we come as men of light, men of vision and men of honor - to replace what was lost, fix what was broken, and renew a pervasive conscience long considered dead." I'm not going to go in to the merits of the cause or the movement - I'm going to give you my initial gut reaction. Wow, this is a group for just men so where would I fit in? It struck me as another way of being divided. If the important thing is doing the right thing...righting the wrongs....fixing what is broken....then why does it have to be a man or woman issue? Why would it be an adult or child issue? It is a human issue. I know this will probably piss people off and I will be told I just don't get it but it goes to the larger point I am trying to make here. First impressions often cloud people's judgment. Doing the right thing is a noble thing and what we all want to see our society start to do more. People won't make it past the opening mission statement if they feel excluded. Everyone longs to be included or to at least have a filling of inclusiveness. Would the statement have lost its meaning if you took out men and said "people" instead?
I recently blogged about complacency and how when we speak up in certain situations we get labeled. Have you ever noticed those labels are filled with negative connotations? The bitch, the snitch, the troublemaker....all the things we get called when we speak our mind and voice our opinions about the injustices in the world. We let these labels put us in a position of fear and lock us in to inaction. We spend so much time worrying about what others think about us and their opinions. It is times like these we all need to take a page from our favorite childhood author...Dr. Seuss...“Be Who You Are and Say What You Feel Because Those Who Mind Don't Matter and Those Who Matter Don't Mind.”
By no means do I have the answers and I know I'm guilty of labeling just as much as the next person....so my commitment here and now is to embrace the things that I have in common with those I want to label with negative terms....I mean hell I can even find something I have in common with GW "Bubba" Bush...we are both living in Texas.
This is Pandora returning my label maker to Office Depot....
xoxo
1 comment:
First, I like my boxes with their labels, they have served me well recently.
Second, I agree with the concept that human labeling is wrong and I too must work on not labeling others. Today, I watched two seniors girls (who complain about labels themselves) say that the university should include sexual preference on the house form because they don't want to room with a lesbian. Now we did have a classroom disscussion about why requiring such information would be wrong and would lead to descrimiation. But in the process I did realize something, we want labels that support our point of view and we denounce labels that contradict our views. I feel that this is rather selfish and wonder how much I fall into that very trap.
Third, first impressions are important, they tend to effect the way we see things for a long time, but more so if they are a bad first impression. I don't think we are as trusting if the impression is a good one and actions can fast erode a good first impression. While it would take many actions to overtake a bad first impression. But, if Im right and this is true, then it does truely matter what people think. Even if it does not matter what everyone thinks, everyone has a select group of people who matter to them. If you don't know someone yet, how would you know if it someone that you would want to add to your list, so you have to care at first.
So, back to the question I know ,you will ask "Why does it matter?" The answer is because as it turns out we do live in small world and if we are labeled badly, then life WILL BE harder for us or by association our children and friends. It does weigh heavy on my conscience that my actions would cause someone pain or hardship. That weight is maginfied if it is someone I love.
The end of to this cycle is to stop all labels. Is that possible? I don't believe it is. It is our nature to classify and label the world around us. But if we try to stop negatively label other humans, maybe life would be nicer for all of us.
Post a Comment