Labels, Labels, Everywhere

"Labels can only confine. Aspire to be undefinable." 

 --Colin Wright

Interestingly, I have found in my work as a counselor that labeling often is a distracting thing. For the client and for the therapist. A lot of time can be spent unpacking and processing internal and external labels that are carried around. Often times the labels people are shouldering seem like a necessary part of their lives but at the same time restrict and limit aspirations, dreams, and growth.

Though often a necessary part of our lives, and just by using language like we must, we are by definition, constantly, consistently, and comprehensively labeling things. 

Label: I am sitting at my desk writing this blog post.

Label: I am drinking coffee.

Several labels for me: I am a sixty-two-year-old heterosexual white male (at the time of this writing).

Many that I work with in counseling therapy are bothered and negatively impacted by labels, in the sense that the rub seems to be that there is often too much meaning given to how they get labeled. I see people not only as people of color or not, the first-born son, youngest child, mean girl, slow-learner, tall, angry, moody, helpful, or agoraphobic, but thousands of labels at once. How can I put too much importance on one, or a shortlist of them?

Labels can feel like material possessions, and for many people that struggle with mental health, are a very heavy, cumbersome burden that they are desiring to be rid of. Labels are often fables, lies, and myths that have been told to us or we have adopted as true beliefs about ourselves. They can become boundaries and obstacles that limit what we strive for or what can safely be crossed. People often understand and affirm that they are necessary, but may come to recognize and believe with some deep work and self-reflection that they don’t need to give them as much meaning as some people ask them to put on them. 

And there is a difference in the concept of labels for expressing "meaning" and for "identification" purposes. Imagine 10 cans of different soups lined up on a shelf with the labels all removed and you want chicken noodle. Identification would be difficult and you may have to settle for tomato or vegetable beef soup in this game of canned goods roulette.

Martina Navratilova said that "Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people." Labels are a good thing for soup cans.

As for labels in my life, I quietly use them in silence as the start of the process of better understanding someone or something. But I always fall back on how my whole life I looked at the world through Dr. King's message to treat people not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I updated my internal message to "I engage with the common humanity of humankind not through labeling, but by deeply exploring the content of a person's heart, discovering who they are."

Coyote

"Coyote, old man, wanderer, where you going, man?" 

—from “A Good Journey” by Simon Ortiz

Coyote was the trickster of Native American lore in North America. He was always mixing it up with the Native Americans wherever their paths crossed. Sometimes Coyote got the best of the human beings and sometimes those human beings bested Coyote and benefited from his blundering, braggart ways.

I believe that Coyote exists inside me. In fact, Coyote dwells in all humans in my philosophical understanding. Coyote is a spirit animal that takes control of me and causes all kinds of mischief. He makes me playfully roughhouse with grandkids, kids, nieces, nephews and all assorted little human beings. He makes my hugs a little too rough. Coyote nature persuades me to tell tall tales that my wife has trouble believing, even if I am telling the truth (or often times not). My conversation holds exaggerations and colorful bits of extravagance.

This strange Coyote behavior seems to give my journey through life a younger feeling pace as if by inwardly deceiving myself, I will not grow old quite so fast. And that puzzling Coyote behavior won't allow the surrounding human beings to ever totally understand what is "me." Fellow human beings shouldn't mind me this slight, sly mystery. There is nothing bad or wrong about its nature, it just travels with and preserves me...silent, sacred, peacefully alone among my fellow human beings.

And as I wander here and there as did Coyote, and my journey passes within your space and time, be prepared for my tricks, touching you with a bit of wonder about what is me.

And please, share some tricks of your own. Make us other human beings wonder where you have been and what roads lie ahead for you to travel, what tricks are up your sleeves.

Ecclesiastes or the "Gatherer"

"For in much wisdom is much grief, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow." — Ecclesiastes, Chapter (1:18)

American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote, "I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound." I couldn't agree more. I recently explored once again this short chapter out of renewed curiosity when I read somewhere that it had been suspectedly written by the great biblical King Solomon. 

In one of my college sociology classes, I had been given a new awareness of the vast sociological differences in the way I viewed the wide range of wealth and privilege in the world. So I was recently thinking, “What better way than to look through the eyes of what was possibly one of the most wealthy and powerful rulers to ever breathe the air of the Earth.” Also, I could explore his perspective from the twilight of his lifetime.

What I found was a book filled with the despair that could only come to someone who seemingly had everything—wealth, power, privilege, love—yet realized that it was meaningless against the vastness of the outstretched eternity and the far-flung past. It was filled with words like "vain", "futile", "empty", "meaningless", "temporary", "transitory", "fleeting," or "mere breath."  For most of this book, Solomon—if indeed he wrote this—seems to be unable to comprehend and ascribe any type of eternal meaning to the wisdom of his life.

The older I get and the more I personally look for more wisdom and more meaning to my existence, yet it begins to feel that those "words" are all that apply. They overshadow all opportunities for the enjoyment of life. I find fault in the order of things, the purpose of being, the why of deeds. Where and when is the spirit to find its rest? With every rock I overturn or every bush I look behind I simply find more to trouble me. One interpretation of the word Ecclesiastes is the "Gatherer" and I have become a "Gatherer" of all sorts of confusion when I seek answers.

But perhaps that is the natural state of man—to question, seek answers, constantly probe the unknown, improve this world in any way possible through individual power, and to define the commandments of our God and ourselves in a way to live by and be proud of.

It is fitting from my viewpoint, that the book of Ecclesiastes concludes with "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone" (12:13). After all, both fools and kings, become just dust in the end.