It is a universally admitted truth that labels are bad. And I don't just mean clothes that cost thousands and look silly. I mean labels we put on people. It is funny to think that language constraints the way we think: people are labeled as 'nice' or 'nasty', 'clever' or stupid' and more annoyingly the destructively 'sensitive' or 'strong', 'opinionated', 'feisty' and so on. There are two problems with these labels however.
The first one is that they are useless. Nobody is simply 'feisty' or 'shy'. People are multi-faceted beings with a bit of everything. Not to mention the fact that nobody knows one's true character unless put in a certain situation and been requested to adapt. Nobody knows what he or she is capable of, until they face a situation that makes them exceed their own limits. Also there are so many subtle characterizations that cannot fit one label. Being feisty is one thing but how do you call a person who is feisty most of the times but a true wimp in front of their parents? I have a trait that I don't know how to describe: when I am waiting for the bus to go to work, I get quite nervous if I don't know where I am going to sit. I then try to look inside the bus when I'm queueing next to it and find a seat in advance, so that when I get in I can march decisively towards that seat, without looking insecure or something. How do you call that? I guess one could argue that this is a instance of some other clearer trait of my character, but I don't think so.
The second problem has to do with the actual accuracy of these labels. It seems to me that most of them are superimposed on us by others and are almost always wrong. Once, when you're three, someone thinks you're shy and that label chases you around till you die. Actually, sometimes people actually behave according to these superimposed fake labels, they start believing them and consider them the best way to view themselves. They make decisions according to them, that are usually wrong and torment them for life and can perhaps never be reversed. And all of that because some idiot once made a comment about one's character...
I think people have to actively oppose this. People should be forced to reinvent and reinterpret themselves in a daily basis. Otherwise you run the risk of being a label freak, and nobody wants that!
1 comment:
I think that being able to reinvent yourself on a daily basis is almost impossible - we are what we are and there's no escape. But we can try to live outside these 'labels' and, like you say, take them for what they are - just stupid labels. The problem is that living outside labels is also a label and there's no escape to the fact that our mind works in 'leagues'. Woody Allen beings 'Annie Hall' by saying that 'I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me for a member', meaning you always want the higher label, the person or the thing that you think is better than you, out of your league. That can only cause you pain. Leagues and labels are fake and unfair, they reflect the inequalities in society and are also a sign of how superficial we have all become. We judge people on their looks, their tastes, the music they listen to, their jobs, their nationalities, the books they read, everything. We judge people based on what John Cusack said in the great High Fidelity - what is important is what you like, not what you are like.
The whole thing is so superficial that it makes me really mad. I completely agree with this post because I want to like people based on what they are like, not on what they like (and by the way, I've always known that watching High Fidelity so many times would prove itself very useful eventually and I guess I was right).
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