Labels

White. Black. Gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. Muslim. Catholic. Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Wife. Husband. Best Friend. ....
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I’ve come to the realization these past few weeks that labels are what’s really wrong with the world. So many wars fought, politicians foiled, and relationships destroyed over a conflict of labels. Why does our society insist on labeling everything? Johnny Depp thought that the purpose of a label was “something to put the price tag on the back of.” I like that explanation—our society is so capitalist to the core that it was only a matter of time before the tenets of marketing seeped into the essence of our humanity. Society labels us like sundry goods so they can sort us into the supermarket of life. They would not be confident with all of us jammed into the Miscellaneous aisle.....
But the act of labeling is much older the capitalism, so the root of it has to be something even more ancient. I truly believe that labeling is part of our basic nature as humans. It goes back to the thing that separates us from the beasts: reason. We as finite beings with limited understanding of the cosmos desire a way to understand the world. Consider how the ancients created their religious systems. The Greeks looked up at the sky and saw a massive ball of fire that was replaced with a blanket of night on a regular basis. Not satisfied with the world as it was, they labeled it Apollo, the sun god who drives his chariot across the sky each evening to set the sun to bed. We, in 2009, obviously know that their explanation is wrong, and most of us, even the little ones, could explain to you the orbit of the earth around the sun while it revolves on its own axis. Thus to label is like taking swirling shapes and metamorphsising rainbows and rendering it in black and white on canvas. No matter the beauty of the drawing, it is too limited to capture what it is portraying. ....
Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Wife. Husband. Best Friend. These ways to label relationships aggravate me even more because they imply a set of characteristics that one must have in order to don the label: loyalty, mutual agreement. Yet not everyone wears the labels the same way. I’ve had boyfriends that were unfaithful, yet still called themselves my boyfriend. I know best friends that will stab each other in the back when the chance arises. I know people who have been married to multiple people at once, and I know people who are only married for the financial benefits. A label does mean that you will live happily ever after like society promises. Such a promise neglects the human element of error and choice. Yet a healthy relationship can exist without the label. Why is it wrong for a man and a woman enjoy each other’s company and be intimate with that person alone without calling each other “girlfriend” or “boyfriend”? If they are fine with the situation they have created, why must others insist on labeling it for them? It only serves to rush along a relationship that might be better served developing on its own. I think that is the reason why relationships fail these days—others are too quick to stick a label Once you are categorized, they can’t wait to stick another label on to you: Girlfriend. Fiancée. Wife. Mother. Grandmother. You spend your whole life collecting labels to apply into your sticker book that you never stop to enjoy life in the moment. It is no wonder then that when relationships fall apart, leaving only crumbling labels, that people become jaded. Why must you stop caring about someone just because he is no longer your boyfriend? Removing a label is like removing a band aid—a scar remains and the sting of ripping it off hurts sometimes more than the initial cut. ....
....White. Black. I know people who are just a shade darker than me, yet society labels them as black. Why? Because an ancestor once came from Africa and who needed more melanin to survive in the sun. Take Barack Obama, for example. I’m sorry, but is not the first black president. He is just white as he is black. I would argue that the label be removed from him, finally. To call him black is to do what the Slavery and Jim Crow laws did for years: to consider someone black because they had a black ancestor, no matter how distant. Despite that change of label, I am excited for his presidency because it is a reflection of the change in America, a change that was begun when the country was first settled. Our population is no longer made up of just white, Protestant, inherently wealthy people any longer. Our country is a mosaic of people from all lifestyles and origins. It excites me that someone from the blue-collar community worked hard enough to achieve such success. I hope that this new meritocracy will be enough to inspire our youth.