How do you describe yourself… are you kind or broken; difficult or desirable. Do you think of yourself as how you look, how you behave, what you believe, or how much money you make?
Have you even decided, in a moment of guilt and shame, to describe yourself by way of your supposed ‘weaknesses’, and branded your soul with a searing indictment that you probably don’t deserve?
Human beings love labels, and almost all of them are complete crap.
On an early morning drive to work yesterday, when the fog was laying a blanket over the wet roads and fields, I listened to a podcast of a new friend of mine. She is a brilliant human being, who is set on making a difference in the world.
Yet as she talked about a recent experience, she couldn’t help but describe herself with many different labels, but especially as an introvert.
How immediately she limits herself with that one word.
Because the truth is that once we have created a label for ourselves, we have immediately defined ourselves not only as we believe we are, but what we are not.
I grew up in pretty humble circumstances, and I still remember walking home with a friend when he asked me a question that still haunts me to this day. I don’t think he meant anything by it, but childhood curiosity is often partnered with a lack of understanding of how words can hurt and scar.
His simple and honest question left a mark that I still struggle with emotionally…
“Why is your family poor?”
Although the circumstances in which I live now are different from the ones I grew up with, I still, in the recesses of my mind that hide from the light and truth of reason, think of myself as poor.
As with most of the labels we carry, there is an emotion connected to it, a value judgment as to the worth of my soul, and this one is shame.
Even though I know it to be false, in my unguarded moments I still feel it to be true, and suffer the pain of that moment from so long ago once again.
In my work with people, in our attempts to help them find peace, we often delve deeply into the labels that they carry wrapped around themselves.
Often times someone holds onto the label of survivor, and while I am often in awe of their ability to survive terrible circumstances and events, that label creates a link to the trauma that they survived.
All the while they are a ‘survivor’, they are always attached to that which hurt them.
While I never ask anyone to let go of a label, we will often converse about different ways that they could see themselves, and try to find ways and words of honoring their existence that empower them without tying them to things that were, or things that are that not so.
Because in the end, every label that you wrap around your soul can be a limit on the experience you have while you are human.
Obviously there are some to which we cling with desperation, and some we aspire to with all the energy of our heart, yet in the end, every label is a definition away from the most powerful truth you could ever understand.
That instead of ‘being’ something, you just are. And that is more than enough.
Because when you can see the majesty and miracle of the consciousness within you, you come to realize that all of the labels are un-necessary, and transient. The more you give up the needs and the restrictions of labels, the more you can be present in the world with just your observation and your wonder.
And you’ll observe that people, and this planet, are wonderful.
May you find within the understanding that just being you, an awareness and consciousness, is more miraculous and majestic than any label you could give yourself.
When you can move through the world simply ‘being’ and not ‘being something’, you’ll act from a place within you that needs no definition, or labels, or restrictions.
You will simply be you.
And you are enough.
Always.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings