BEyond Labels
Have you noticed that from a very young age, we start accumulating an absurd amount of labels? You are black, white, Christian, from X football club, you are kind/mean, you are smart, you are not good at math, you are an athlete, fill in the blank, you are Chilean. There are both positive and negative labels, but labels nonetheless. All these labels that we receive through our education, upbringing, and environment become an intrinsic part of our identity long before our ego has even formed. We grow up with absolute certainty about what our identity is. Now, is this your real identity? Is this persona who you really are?
One of the most obvious universal laws is the law of impermanence—our ever-changing reality. Absolutely everything we see in this world is in a constant flow, in constant change, including us. Change is life; stagnation is death. A label is stagnant, fixed, and rigid. What labels do is create resistance with our ever-changing nature; labels create inner friction within us. And if you are alive and therefore changing, how can you be minimized to a label, to an over-identification? How can we limit ourselves to such an extent when the reality is that in our purest form, we are boundless, limitless, and full of potential?
The only thing that labels do is create fragmentation and division. Think about it: the more labels you identify with, the more separation there is between you and your environment, between you and the people and experiences available to you. For example, let’s say you are overly identified with your political party. That label has so much weight that it creates a bias and clouds your objectivity to see reality as it is. You operate from a “left-wing” political lens that doesn’t allow you to see any value in ideas presented by the opposition. If these same ideas happened to be presented by your political party, you would support them. This is an example of what a strong label and identification can do to you. You can lose touch with reality and your critical thinking.
The more labels you add to your label portfolio, the more disconnected and fragmented you become. Our work as adults is to get rid of all those nonsensical labels that keep us small and limited and work towards a global, universal identification—one that, instead of isolating us from reality and the beauty around us, brings us closer.
What if we were able to see beyond the identification lenses of religion, politics, the football team we support, social class, the neighborhood we live in, or the school we attended? We accumulate all this nonsensical pride about things that have absolutely no substance. By engaging in these labels, the only thing we are doing is letting our souls starve. What if we stopped creating so much separation?
Having these labels in our youth is completely normal; we acquired them unconsciously. As kids, we are sponges and absorb everything our environment tells us. As we grow up and mature, we have the ability to reframe and change certain beliefs that keep us stuck and rigid. It isn’t an easy process; in fact, it can be a very painful one. What happens if we start discovering that we aren’t those labels anymore? What if we discover that we don’t want to be a doctor when our parents installed that belief in us from a young age? This painful process can result in big family problems; it can end friendships and connections. This can be extremely painful in many different ways, but that is the price of fulfillment and true freedom.
Freedom to discover who you really are, what really makes you click, and find excitement and passion for life. That reward overrides any pain and relational rupture. When we get in touch with our true identity and the labels that are more life-encompassing, with the labels we feel we’ve chosen ourselves as adults, with the ones that make us love life, many things happen as a consequence. All the pain we had to endure by losing connections with family members, friends, and our environment is worth it in the future. People, places, and situations that start appearing are aligned with your most authentic self, and very organically and naturally, you are accepted for who you really are. You start attracting the people and situations that support your authentic path, and you aren’t overstretched to superficialities anymore. You can see beyond the ridiculous labels we have created in our social systems. You stop caring so much about that job title, that car, that status, and you look beyond it.
In my own experience, there is so much to grow and learn in this aspect. I still get caught up in so many identifications that bring up the shadow part of myself, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to get to a place in my life where I achieve this universal identification I was talking about. But reflecting on it and working towards it is enough for me. It isn’t a linear process; there are many blind spots that start showing up in my life. But the work is to be aware of them and try to course-correct as you go.
Much love,
Matias