Not all labels are bad . . . certainly if you are decluttering your house or garage, it can be very helpful to have bins that are labeled Keep, Donate and Trash as a way of speeding up the process. Labels that we attach to humans are not nearly as helpful though and can often hinder our relationships and our ability to see another perspective.
I have found that as soon as we attach a "label" to someone, we often stop being curious and we stop learning things about them. It's like we say to ourselves "Ok, they are in THAT bucket, no need to learn anymore about them." In our society right now we're relying on a lot of labels and we're pretty quick to toss someone into one of those "labeled buckets" and walk away.
What if rather than immediately judging someone and subscribing a label to them, you approached them with curiosity. Kind of a "Hey I'd like to understand more about why you did or said that." You might be surprised at what you learn.
As an example, many years ago when Charlton Heston was the head of the NRA, I decided to stay home and watched the annual NRA meeting that was being broadcast on cable that night rather than go out with my friends. Much to my disappointment, when my friends found out why I was staying home I was immediately labeled "one of them" and treated as if I had somehow become someone they didn't like as much. No one asked why I wanted to watch the meeting or showed any interest in understanding where I was coming from, which I found curious and disappointing (Thankfully, I didn't let it stop me from watching it). Even later, when I tried offering up an explanation, I was quickly shut down with negative comments and jokes.
The truth was I had two reasons for tuning in.
1) Charlton Heston had been my most favorite actor since I was a little girl. I used to write letters to movie stars all the time and he was the ONLY one who ever wrote me back. He (Well, most likely his assistant) even sent me a couple signed black and white photos of him following the release of the movie Earthquake and my nine years old self was over the moon! I followed his career closely after that, never missed a movie he made and discovered even more reasons to admire him for the person he was outside of a movie studio. He hadn't been making movies in recent years and I missed seeing him so I looked forward to seeing him give the opening ceremony speech.
2) I had been anti-gun my whole life. Frankly, I was afraid of them. Then I went to college in the Pacific northwest, with people from Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Colorado etc. Many of my classmates had very different views about guns and I regretted that I had never asked questions or shown any curiosity. I just slapped a label on them and that was that. (Well, that and I often found ways to make snide comments about guns whenever I could slip one into a conversation). So my second reason for watching that night was that I wanted to educate myself.
I was shocked by how much I learned in just one night. Many of the things they spoke about were in direct conflict with what I had been told and what I had read in all of my anti-gun literature, etc. I didn't know who was telling the truth but it made me want to explore further before I blindly signed another petition or checked a box on election day.
I never had any regret about watching the Annual meeting that night. Not just because it made me so happy to see Charlton again but because it opened my eyes to the fact that not everything I was being told was the truth. Often what we are told is SOME truth with a bunch of opinions and suppositions wrapped around it but the closer I looked at things, the more I began to see a trend emerging.
Things were often written (by most everyone with a "cause") as a way to sway people one way or another, not necessarily to educate them. (I saw evidence of this in BOTH political parties). I began paying much closer attention to what facts/data were present in what I read vs. what seemed more focused on eliciting an emotional response and I was a bit stunned to realize how often the goal seemed to be more aligned with eliciting an emotional response without the facts to back up all the statements being made. The more I paid attention, the more easily I could recognize what was happening . . . that alone has been a very useful skill for me in the years since - especially lately.
The other things that I believe is dangerous about labels is that words we use can mean different things to different people. A humorous example of this was the time I was out with several of my work colleagues and I mentioned that I had been a cheerleader in junior high and high school. Over half the people at the table looked at me like they were suddenly smelling rotten fish, followed by "You were WHAT?" The look of distain on their faces told me that their definition of "someone who is/was a cheerleader" was very different than mine (and even different amongst them - from heart breaker to air-head to mean girl). That was when I began seeing how charged certain words can be for us. Based on the experiences we've had, the way we personally define a word can vary greatly.
Several years after that, when I was volunteering for a German shepherd rescue group, we were often challenged to match dogs up with the right person/families. Many times people wanted to adopt a specific dog and were very disappointed in our group when they were denied that particular dog and the worst was when a dog we DID adopt out came back with behavioral issues that weren't showing up in their foster family. I took on the job of trying to improve our process for matching and one of the first things I dug into were the descriptions that we wrote about the dogs for our website.
On many of the descriptions we included phrases like "Needs someone who can provide leadership" or "Prefers to live with someone who is home all day." So I dug into it further and began interviewing our foster families. I asked each fosterer "If a dog needs leadership what does that actually mean?" Well, I learned that there wasn't one answer from our various fosterers. I found that it meant: This is a dog who is going to challenge you and is going to require someone who can set boundaries and be very consistent about enforcing those boundaries. And/or it meant that the dog had a strong will and would push someone around who wasn't able to be firm about what was acceptable and not-acceptable. And/or it meant that this was a dog that was going to require specific types of training, with the right rewards attached to reinforce good behavior and more emphasis on cause and effect, etc.
Based on that, we began including more detail about what a particular dog really needed to thrive in their new home and our "match making" improved quite a bit. (I also learned that "prefers someone who is home all day" actually meant "this dog has separation anxiety and will likely destroy things in your home if left alone, even if you are only gone for an hour.") LOL
My point in sharing all of this is that I believe the labels we are relying on so heavily right now are often keeping us locked in a state of polarity and judgment - an "us vs. them" mindset instead of helping us find common ground or seeing things from another perspective. These labels can keep us from seeing things from our hearts, it can keep us from feeling compassion for others. As soon as we decide someone is a "conspiracy theorist" or a "sheep" or a "anti-vaxer" or whatever the label is, we miss out on the opportunity to see the person as a human being . . . a human being who has reasons for what they think, what they believe, the choices they make . . . and I guarantee you that not all the reasons are the same. How could they be? We are all individuals, who have had a wide array of life experiences and different challenges along the way.
If we can look at others with kindness and compassion, we have the opportunity to see so much more. And if we can approach them with curiosity, there is so much we can learn. If we can place more value on who a person really is rather than the label that has been assigned to them, we might be able to shift our experience here on earth in amazing and magical ways. Would you be willing to give it a try?
