Hey you! So today’s topic is something which I myself learnt recently. Its something which we all know in general, but not in particular.Yup, I’m talking about labels, not those labels which we used to stick on our notebooks during our schooldays or those popular labels like Dior, Chanel; I’m talking about human labels.
We label each person with different names and categories. For example, when we’re born we are a child, when we reach puberty, we are called teenagers. When we achieve maturity, we are known as adults and when we grow old, we die (just kidding, actually we go to an alternate world called heaven and are born again). Each stage we are in is distinguished by certain characteristics too. Like in puberty, being confused, feeling stuck like at crossroads, excessive anger and its poor management and so forth. Again, each person is assigned different labels: basically male or female and if you’re not either of these, you will be labelled as “Not found” in the register of society.
Again in our daily life too, we carry certain labels in the form of relationships like brother/sister, cousin, mother/father, friend/foe, son/daughter, boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife and so on. And quite often, we switch between these roles so swiftly and elegantly that it almost goes unnoticed. In one way, it’s good that we are so into these relationships. But the real problem arises when people can’t see you beyond one label and they’re demanding too much from you, expecting you to react or not to react in a specific way; or worse when people cannot even recognize that single label they’ve assigned to you.
Don’t understand what I’m trying to say eh? Let me give you a demo. For example, you have a friend with whom you used to enjoy very well and then suddenly your friend confesses his/her love to you and you’re in a fix. He/she is now asking to turn your friendship into love effective immediately and the problem is you’ve never seen him/her in that label (it can be the other way round too, you know that!). Or a women who is being judged by everyone as “the one who knows nothing, or who hasn’t seen the world” mother/homemaker. (Go back to Actress Sridevi’s English/Vinglish). Or a child who’s poor in studies, their parents pressurizing him/her to work even harder because duh! the child has no other life than being a student throughout. These are not even some of the cases from the entire lot of problems faced by us. Ironically or otherwise, these are the problems which are forcing a lot of us to approach a psychologist and address these concerns. Again because not only are we being thrown into these limbos but also we cannot recall anyone who can possibly or actually help us during these times.
You may say, “Oh, this is not the real problem. Tell us something like mental health, depression.” or “The society was always like this, you know. Love yourself. It’s the best and all these will go away.” Well, I can’t say that you’re either right or wrong. These kinds of labels are so transparent yet very important to recognize and understand them, by all of us. We cannot expect our parental generation (both maternal and paternal) to understand this because they come from a different generation altogether, raised by different cultures and values. Not that they’re doing it wrong or being raised in an incorrect way, they’re just being raised differently which might not be suitable for this time.
And that change need not to start from those society ke chaar log (those four people from the society). It can start from you. While switching between these, choose way in which you can avoid carrying the burden or putting yourself out there so that you can seamlessly pass through all of these labels seamlessly. Take your own time out of all of these, your ‘Yay, me’ time.Do whatever you feel like singing, dancing, painting (with no audience if it’s terrible). What’s better called as “loving yourself” when you’re giving yourself time eh?
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