Labels

When we put a label on something, we create an easy handle by which to refer to it.

We call the road Creekside Avenue so that we don’t have to call it “the road that runs by the creek but not the one made of gravel, I mean the big two-lane road”.

We call the dish Mom’s Vegetable Soup so we don’t have to list all the ingredients every time we talk about it: “a brothy mixture that contains onions, celery, carrots, …”

A label is practical.  But every label is a simplification.  It’s a shorthand, built for expediency, and sometimes we make the mistake of thinking the label encompasses everything there is to know.

So we spend a lot of energy trying to boil people down to a few labels:

1. The title or profession they hold
2. Their country of origin or ethnicity
3. Their political affiliation
4. Whether they’re a “good person” or not

Labels can be valuable.  But if we latch onto the labels too much, we stop paying attention. We stop listening, stop observing and stop learning.  And we miss the nuance, complexity and depth of the unique human in front of us.