The Downside of Labeling Someone

 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 anything more 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.

Today, I'd like to ask you to consider something different.

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 or believe 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 nor did they show 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. Over time, I 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 watching 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. Many of my classmates had very different views about guns because they had grown up around them 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 in the meeting were in direct conflict with what I had been told and what I had read in all of my political and anti-gun literature, etc. There was a big disparity between what I had been told regarding their priorities and what they were standing for. I didn't know who was telling the truth but it made me want to explore it 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 hold different meaning to different people. A humorous example of this was the time I was out with a large group 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) Based on people's personal experiences with cheerleaders, the term might conjure thoughts of them being heart breakers or air-heads or mean girls. That was when I began seeing how charged certain words can be for each of us. Based on the experiences we've had, the way we personally define a word (label) can vary greatly.

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 understanding or feeling compassion for others. I think that as soon as we label someone, 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. 

It is my believe that if we can stop labeling people, we can more easily look at others with kindness and compassion and this gives us the opportunity to see so much more. And if we can approach others with curiosity, I believe there is so much we can learn. Furthermore, 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 open the door to deeper relationships with them. 

Would you be willing to give it a try? You might be surprised by how much common ground is there and you may find a new level of respect for people you would have previously ignored or written off.

Things Are Not Always What They Appear To Be

 

I am writing this in the hopes that it can be a gentle nudge for folks to sharpen their discernment skills. We are surrounded by so many opportunities to make assumptions and be led astray. A snapshot can take on so many different "meanings" based on what is written (or not written) to go along with the picture. Whether it is a personal picture or a picture on a business website . . . a sentence, a few sentences or a whole article - I see it happening all around us. This seems to be on the rise even more now than ever, which may require us to be more curious and to ask a lot more questions than we have had to in the past. 

A humorous example of this is several years ago a good friend of mine got chastised by family and "friends" for spending too much time in bars (based solely off his posts on social media). They saw him post artful pictures of cocktails, some group shots and empty plates and glasses. Based on that, people automatically assumed he was betraying his family, being an absentee father, becoming an alcoholic, etc. None of that could have been farther from the truth.

It irritated him so he called up a few of us and said "If you can come over tonight, I'll cook dinner. Oh and bring hats and some books." Of course we all thought "What??" but we complied. LOL  When we arrived he told us about the bashing he was getting and said he wanted to post something "different." We took some pictures with our hats and books and then he posted them on social media with a caption about being at a poetry reading that night. It was a hoot and we had a really good laugh over the whole thing.

It is a perfect example of how easy it is to misread / misunderstand pictures and how easy it is for people to purposely mislead others. Maybe you have seen some of this occurring as well. 

Bottom line, we will be helping ourselves immensely if we take the time to discern what the truth is . . . whether it is through asking questions, tuning into our intuition or any other means to authenticate what we are seeing or what assumptions we are about to make. Maybe it comes down to not automatically believing things unless we personally know the person who made the post or if you are only seeing pictures of "happy employees" while interviewing for a job, maybe you can ask for permission to speak to a few employees one-on-one to learn more about the company from them. Whatever the situation is - the point I am making is that it up to us to be more cautious about what is being shared or presented to us.

In the case of my friend all those years ago, he thought posting pictures of he and his family watching a movie together or a picture of he and his wife when they were sharing intimate time was not appropriate for social media and/or way too personal. He tended to take pictures when he was out with friends, whether it was a work function / offsite or boredom when his wife and kids went out of town to visit her parents. He was just being goofy and those of us who knew him and his sense of humor knew not to make any assumptions about what he posted.

After our "poetry reading" that night, we went for a walk around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. While we were out, it started to rain but in the photographs, the raindrops looked more like snow. It would have been so easy to include a caption that said "First snow in California in three decades." Most folks wouldn't have thought twice about it, unless of course they were someone who lived in the neighborhood and knew better. :-) 

I'm not suggesting that we all become paranoid - LOL - just merely offering up that sharpening our discernment skills could help us quite a bit in the current environment we are in. Whether it is accidental or on purpose, it is really easy these days to give people a false impression, skew reality or get people to believe things that aren't true.

Let's Stay In Our Own Lane

In the last few years, it's been troubling to me how comfortable everyone seems to have become with telling other people how to run their lives. We hear everyone else's opinion whether we've asked or not - and it often comes with an expectation that we are going to do what we are told to do by others. 

Recently, I posted a request for Kino on our neighborhood email list for tennis balls and a 5 gallon paint bucket. The two seemingly unrelated items are the key to keeping Kino exercising, given that he is only interested in chasing tennis balls if I am trying to do something else in the yard. haha Consequently, I drag the bucket around the yard with me as I plant flowers or pull weeds. After a few decades, the paint bucket that he inherited from Lucky cracked so it was time for a replacement. 

Given that I prefer to reuse/recycle things, I put the request out to see if anyone had some of what we needed. Much to my delight, we quickly got offers for both . . . in fact, Kino now has so many tennis balls, we've got an extra stash in the garage for when the current batch gets broken and we lucked out getting two buckets instead of one because the person who donated the bucket couldn't get the two unstuck.  :-)  

While most of the responses were very positive - with either offers to share what they had with Kino or compliments on his good looks - we also received unsolicited advice. I was told how dangerous it is to allow dogs to play with tennis balls and received videos showing the dangers of what happens when a tennis ball gets lodged in a dog's throat. I received a strong recommendation on where I could go to buy a paint bucket and how dangerous it was to use a bucket with dried paint in it. I'm not knocking them, I know their hearts are in a good place, but all this "advice" came without knowing any of the facts (i.e. what I do for a living, how many years I have had dogs, how responsible or irresponsible I am as a guardian or if the paint buckets even had dried paint on the inside . . . that was an assumption on their part since they never even saw the buckets)

It troubles me that we've gotten so comfortable with overreaching when it comes to telling people what we think they should do. Especially when people have no idea what the full circumstances are. Just as we, as a society, seem to have decided it's ok to tell others how to manage their health. I see people crossing the line every single day - thinking THEY have the answer to what someone else should do - that the approach they are taking is the RIGHT one and everyone else is not only wrong but they are "selfish" and "uncaring" if they don't make the same choice. 

So this blog is basically a plea . . . asking people to respectfully stay in their own lane. If I want to throw tennis balls for my dog while I am doing yard work, that is my business. If I want to use a recycled item rather than buying that item new from a store, that is my business as well. 

It is also my business how I manage my own health. I will continue to do whatever is best for me, based on the knowledge I have of my body, how I look after my health and based on my history. If I want to get seven booster shots or zero shots, that's up to me to decide because it is my body, it is my health. I would never consider telling someone what they should do . . . I look forward to the day that that respect goes both ways.  

Maybe before we fling our advice around, we can pause and ask ourselves "Did this person ASK for my advice? or am I throwing my advice at them without their request for input? Before we decide we know what is best for others, maybe we can pause and ask ourselves "Do I know everything there is to know about this person's circumstances? their history? or am I making a bunch of assumptions? Before we begin name calling and belittling and harshly criticizing others for the choices they make, maybe we can ask ourselves "Is it my job to decide what others should do?" and "Is it really OK to judge people so harshly and bully them just because they are making a choice that is different from mine?"

I personally believe that our job is to manage ourselves and our own lives . . . unless we are expressly asked for our opinion, I think that it is best if we stay in our own lane and worry about ourselves. I know that if someone WANTS my opinion they will ask for it. I also know that the only person I can control is myself. 

I respect the fact that we are each on our own journey here - I honor the path that each person is on and the choices they make for themselves. So once again, I ask "Can we please all stay in our own lane?"

P.S.  I am not pretending that I've never done this . . . as any of my ex-boyfriends can attest to, I was the queen of over-stepping and telling them what I thought they should do.  :-)  Learning that about myself and being able to apologize to almost all of them for the myriad of times I over-stepped was a part of my journey. It's definitely a learning process and I am grateful that I was able to find my way to a place where I can respect and honor what others are doing / not doing.